Kirk Gilbert of the Cereal Killers, from Whitehorse, took part in his third Skagway 4th of July Softball Tourney.

“We try to go every year – at least I try and put a team in every year cause it’s a great tournament. It’s fun. The fields are fantastic and the guys that are hosting are wonderful to deal with.”

Gilbert said there were a couple changes this year.

“We did a six and four – so that’s six males and four females, which I believe it used to be five and five, so it’s kind of more along the lines to what we’re doing here in Whitehorse.

“They’re tournament-style, so they did kind of like our Dustball, where they do the seeding, so a round-robin. So you play three games and then you’re seeded but they used to do it as in Pool A and Pool B, but this time they took all eight teams and put them into one bracket.”

Usually the top four teams will play each other, but they usually have 12 teams, as opposed to eight this time.

“It was supposed to be my team from co-ed going, but then we picked up a few players from other teams, which is great,” he added.

“The weather couldn’t be beat,” recalled Gilbert. “I’m glad I went to Skagway and didn’t go to Faro apparently cause I heard they had a little bit of a rough time, but it went really well. We played good. My team couldn’t have done any better I don’t think. It just happened to be we were playing some better teams. We did run into the odd thing there, where every rule was a little bit different depending on which umpire you had. It just happens there – it’s tournaments and stuff like that.

“Having to teach people that have never been there that we use single-wall bats, which is different there, so people aren’t able to hit it as hard.

“And then they also play with a white chalk line in the outfield ... you cannot cross that line until the batter hits the ball ... so you don’t have a bunch of people cheating in all the time.

“Playing with a different bat – we’re so used to playing with composite bats, and to switch over to a single-wall aluminum, it makes a big difference.”

In fact, Gilbert bought a bat specifically for the tournament that wasn’t allowed.

“The make was fine, but that model wasn’t on the list.

“Before you start playing, the umpire is supposed to come over and check each of your bats to make sure – your first game, they check it on their list to make sure that it’s there and after that, usually the umpire would come over before each game to check to make sure it had their little sticker, their tape, to show that it has been inspected already.”

“The games went really good,” said Gilbert. “It’s a little bit of a learning curve right off the get-go, so everybody is finding what positions they’re wanting to be in, where everything fits. How many can bat ... and as the games go on, especially with that heat, they get tired, sore – like I’m still sore from it and now we’ve got Dustball coming up.”

Gilbert said it was about 25º or 26º C in Skagway.

“But the nice thing is that you have the nice cool breeze so you don’t really notice the heat as much,” related Gilbert.

“There was a few people who got fairly burnt.”

Gilbert said the games were fairly competitive.

“They were good. We’d lose some by 10, then there’s others ... all kind of within that range. I don’t think we had any really big blowouts.”

Gilbert said the competition was good.

“Everybody is good. I wanted to play the Wild, which is from here but they were in the opposite pool, so we just never came across each other. So we played the teams, I’m sure, were higher up than us, other than ... the Pink Sox.

“We put out the Pink Sox and after that we lost to PBR, I think,” said Gilbert.

“I was anticipating to probably place first or second in Pool B ... and once we got into the tournament, I was hoping to finish around fourth or fifth and I’m pretty sure that’s kind of where we ended up.

“So we kind of did what I thought, so it’s not bad, all-in-all.”

The Cereal Killers finished the tourney with a 2-5 record. .

The top four teams were Amak, Klondike, Buncha Hit Talkers and PBR.

Amak edged Klondike 11-10 to take the tournament title.

There was no money given out at this tourney.

“It’s not like Faro, where they do a cash thing. You just go down there to play for fun,” said Gilbert.

Gilbert said he’s planning on playing in the tourney next year.

“I want to,” said Gilbert. “If everything goes right, we’ll be doing the same thing. We’ll be going down again ... take the family across, go have some fun. The plan is to always do Skagway if I can.”

Next up for the Cereal Killers is Dustball.

“We have a few players that won’t be around, so we’ll be picking up some different players. I even emailed Andre from Skagway there and said if any of his people want to come play co-ed with us, I’d be happy to have them.”

Gilbert added an endorsement for the Skagway 4th of July tourney. “I’d recommend it to everybody. It’s a great tournament. It’s fun to play ... they do the camping in the parking lot where the ballfields are, so for those people it’s free camping ... they’ve got the disc golf course there.

“It’s a great time. So I think if people are looking for some fun, it’s really worth going and checking it out.”