Estevan to host Energy City Exposure Showcase this weekend

Some of the country's brightest young female softball players will be converging on Estevan for the Canada Day long weekend as the city gets set to host the Energy City Exposure Showcase Tournament for the second year in a row.

The event runs Friday until Sunday at the Pleasantdale diamonds, with camps on Friday and games on Saturday and Sunday.

"We have contacted college coaches from across Canada and the United States for them to come up and hopefully watch our players that we have coming to this event," said organizer and coach Morgan Walter. "It's all about getting exposure for the players. We want them to be able to perform in front of these college coaches and hopefully provide them with an opportunity to get seen and hopefully one day maybe get recruited to go play at their college program."

"Essentially it's about players who want to play at the next level, but also it's a great opportunity for all players to come and tune up on some of their skills and see some more game action before provincials."

The tournament will consist of the U15 and U17 age groups. There will be 10 teams, including a pair of local squads: the U15 Southeast Sun Devils and the U17 Southeast Sun Devils, the team that Walter coaches.

"We've got three teams coming from Alberta, two teams coming from Manitoba, and five teams from Saskatchewan," Walter said.

Walter is hoping they can ride the momentum of last year's inaugural event.

"It was kind of a test run for us, we only had five teams in attendance, it was just kind of to see how this would roll, and we got really good feedback from the coaches and all the teams in attendance," she said. "So this year we decided to go ahead and double in size and it's a much larger event this year than it was last year, and we're hoping it continues that way too."

"We hope it continues for years to come. I think it's really great to be able to bring coaches to Saskatchewan to see our players and the talent that we have within our province."

Walter said the event is open to the public with day and weekend passes available for purchase.