The Alberta Summer Games recently wrapped up in Grande Prairie with a gold medal win from the Zone 2 Baseball team.
Zone 2 won the gold with an 8-0 win over Zone 5-Yellowhead with Airdrie’s Jason Makarus as one of the coaches. 
Makarus says that the overall experience was great for the coaches and the players.
“It’s always interesting when we get to bring together a bunch of ballplayers from different club teams to perform there as well as being at a multi-sport event. Going into it, we thought we had a good shot to have some success and ultimately came through with the gold medal. Ultimately we had lots of depth and we were able to get through what we needed to to get to our goal.”
After finishing in 6th place at the last Summer Games in 2016, Makarus says that winning gold was the only option this time around.
“We almost expected it because of how well the boys have played all the way through. When we came through it was like, yeah, this is what we set out to do and there was no deterring us from that once we had faced a little adversity through the tournament.”
Just one player from Airdrie was on the Zone 2 team, due in large part to some prospective players already playing for the Airdrie A’s in the Canadian Senior Baseball Championships.
As a baseball coach and supporter in Airdrie, Makarus is happy to see that the sport is gaining momentum in Airdrie and the province.
“We have seen numbers in Alberta just in baseball alone grow drastically over the last couple years with the success of the Toronto Blue Jays and people are really realizing that it is a great game and also trying to be multi-sport athletes, I think the awareness of that is becoming bigger. Baseball is another good opportunity for that away from our mainstream sports.”
The Zone 2 team included players from Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks, Strathmore, and Sundre.
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Wed, Apr 24, 10:00 AM
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