The 2022 Skagway 4th of July International Coed Softball Tournament wrapped up on Sunday.

It ran from July 1-3.

Eight teams participated in the tournament, including four from Whitehorse.

Logan Freeze was a member of Buncha Hit Talkers from Whitehorse, a team assembled to play in the tourney. It was their first time playing in the event as a team.

“We took the majority of our team that had gone up to Dawson last year for their Labour Day tournament,” recalled Freese.

“We won the tournament up in Dawson last year and then basically (had) a pretty good group of people and we’d gone down to this one because we were all pretty excited about it – the majority of us had gone to Faro last year and we were a little more concerned about the five hour drive home on a Sunday after a baseball tournament than just a two hour drive (to Skagway, Alaska).”

Freese has played in the Skagway 4th of July tournament many times.

“It’s always a fantastic tournament. Andre (Bykowski) always puts on an amazing tournament down there and with how they run the concession and how great shape the fields are in – it’s always a great time.”

“They were really really fun,” he added. “Couldn’t have asked for better weather while we were down there. We had probably the most fun out of just about any team out there ... we had a great time. There’s definitely going to be some fond memories taken away from that one there.

“The team that we sent down is just a great group of people and super-fun to play with and against, so I really quite enjoyed that.”

“It was great fun,” said Freese. “A couple of Whitehorse teams, a lot of Alaskan teams ... it’s a great sort of almost community event down there with how everybody goes down and stays right at the ball park ... it’s great to have that back after having missed it for a few years here.”

Freese said the tourney “could have gone a little better. We ended up in third. We ended up losing by one run in the bottom of the 7th to the Klondike team from Skagway, I believe it was. It was a great game, it just didn’t quite end up our way, some unique circumstances but I don’t want to take anything away from those guys there.”

The teams were separated into two divisions in a seeding round which determined the rankings for the double-elimination side of the tourney.

“We had aspirations of the finals and probably should have got there ... but Klondike put up a pretty good squad. They played a unique game, not exactly a Canadian game, but they played their way and they came out on top.”

According to Freese, the final score in the semi-final game was 15-14.

“They played well. We beat them before so we expected to beat them again, but it didn’t quite work out that way.

The team finished the tourney with a 5-2 record.

“We had a couple of folks, this was their first year playing and they came up huge. One of them (Loralee Martin) battled through quite a few injuries. She took a pretty nasty ball to the head and her ankle all but blew up on her there and she’s still planning on running in the Reckless Raven. She’s a trooper out there.”

“We definitely had aspirations of the finals. That’s kind of where we’d anticipated ending up, especially with the team that we’d taken down. Even with a couple first years, we still had a pretty solid roster here,” he added.

The team is planning on playing in the tourney next year.

“I definitely think we will,” said Freese. “We’re basically going to be taking a similar roster up to Dawson again.

“We had so much fun up there that we decided to keep the fun goin’ this year.”

Freese added “We had a semi-professional team of batboys. That’s the benefit of taking seven kids down.

“They had probably more fun than we did.”

“It was an excellent weekend and now everybody’s excited to have everyone come here (for Dustball).”