The Wellington Sox won the Ontario Challenge Cup tournament held here Sept. 13 to 15.
The tournament included league champions from various men’s fastball leagues around southern Ontario.
Although the Sox dropped out of first in the regular season standings in the South Perth Men’s Fastball League after challenging for first most of the year, they qualified for the event as the host team.
The Sox, made up primarily of Harriston and Palmerston area players, went undefeated in the Challenge Cup event, blasting Walton 17-4 on Sept. 13 and edging Woodstock Kelsey’s and the Wiarton Nationals both by 3-2 counts on Sept. 14. On Sept. 15 they beat Sheddon by a 3-1 score and the n defeated the Mildmay Mets 3-2 in an eight-inning final game.
In the final game, Wellington came back to tie the game at 1-1 in the seventh, then added two more in the eighth to pull-ahead by two. The Mets managed a run to pull within one in their half of the eighth, but left two men on base.
“It was a wild finish,” said Ron Gilbert, a member of the Sox coaching staff.
Gilbert said the squad has been focusing on the Challenge Cup this season and felt they had a good chance of winning the event, which qualifies them for next summer’s International Softball Congress World Championships to be held in Kitchener.
“That was always the intention. This is the one we were going for,” he said.
The team is already three-time ISC World Champions, having won in 2003 and 2004 as the Harriston Mercurys and in 2010 as the Wellington Sox.
