By Kathy Gallant

Canoe Lake hosts FSIN fastball at Flying Dust FN

Aug 20, 2018 | 12:00 PM

It was a busy weekend of strikes, outs, runs and celebrating community. 

This past weekend, Canoe Lake Cree Nation hosted the annual Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) adult fastball tournament, which took place at ball diamonds in Flying Dust and Meadow Lake. Over 27 teams from across Saskatchewan met on the field, which included men’s, women and senior men’s competitions.

Lorne Iron, band counsellor with Canoe Lake, was one of many who helped organize the event. He has the portfolios of public works and sports recreation, and said the community put a bid in to host last year, and the motivation behind it was two-fold. He said Wanda Iron was the main organizer, and many volunteers made the event possible.

“One of the main reasons we wanted to host it is because we wanted to bring fastball back to the north,” he said. “Canoe Lake First Nation’s team travels a lot – to Cranbrook, Kamloops, and Regina. We also wanted to bring it closer to our fans too.”

He said the partnership with Flying Dust and Meadow Lake was incredibly positive. The First Nation allowed use of the diamonds free of charge, while the city charged a discounted rate.

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“We had quite a few fans out during the event,” he said. “We hope everybody enjoyed it.”

Next year, Iron said the leadership of Canoe Lake hope to do some work to local facilities to be able to host a smaller scale fastball event in their own region.

“This is the closest we brought it home,” Iron said. “I’m sure we’ll have the support. Community members were all helping out.”

kathy.gallant@jpbg.ca

On Twitter @ReporterKath