Bucket lids, chip bags or the nearest big rock.
Those were three things common to the young people who spent hours beating around a softball in the gravel pit in Lumsden to keep their minds occupied in a small community.
It was these things that usually served as a base for the ball game.
Wendy Parsons was one of those young people.
She admits to being a tomboy who loved to play softball with her brother Paul and a group of his buddies in the gravel pit when she was a youngster growing up in the tiny community on the province’s northeast coast.
“We would just hit the ball and run,” Parsons said as she reflected on her early introduction to the game as a child.
There were no rules. There were no cheering fans from the sidelines. It was just a bunch of youngsters who only needed a glove and an old wooden bat to feel like they were on top of the world.
Parsons never played organized baseball or softball, her only experience coming from those days in the gravel pit, but she moved to Corner Brook from Grand Falls-Windsor in 2016 and immediately went looking for new groups to get involved with in her new surroundings — a move to the west coast that came after she and her husband had spent almost five years driving back and forth to see each other.
An administrative clerk with the provincial government who owns a social marketing business, Parsons wasn’t in the city long before she found a game of women’s volleyball to fill out the winter months. She also discovered a hiking group and a game of softball with Whelan’s Gate in the Corner Brook women’s softball league in her search to find things to help her keep focused on living an active lifestyle with lots of time spent in the outdoors.
She joined the women’s league at the midway mark. She hesitated getting involved, but eventually made her way to the diamond, where she found a good group of girls who were eager to help her find her way.
She admits it was a tad tougher to play the games with a bunch of rules in place, but she believes she’s slowly adjusting to the game on the competitive side and has no regrets about taking the plunge into a new sport.
“I’m having a lot of fun and l’ve been learning the rules the hard way,” she said with a hearty chuckle.
Yes, there have been some anxious moments.
On three occasions last summer she left the base without tagging up on a fly ball and was called out. She had no idea what she did was wrong, but she’s just fine with learning more about the game as she goes, regardless of how it may look sometimes.
A night out with a bunch of girls having a game of ball is something she now looks forward to with more excitement.
She has been trying to get a handle on how to throw the ball and how to be a better contact hitter, things she believes are coming along because of the support from her teammates and coach, who have a pretty good idea of how tough it can be to get used to playing a new sport.
She had fun playing with the boys in the gravel pit. It’s a time that will always stick with her, no matter what she does, because it was a happy time when nobody had a care in the world.
It appears she has discovered that excitement once again as she embraces life on the diamond with some more new friends.
Whelan’s Gate will open the Corner Brook Molson Ladies’ Softball League regular season against the defending champion KSAB Rangers on June 4 at 6:30 p.m. at Ambrose O’Reilly Memorial Field.
