Ella has played softball for 9 years, mostly for Lakehill in Victoria as there are not enough girls in her age group to maintain a team in Duncan. Last year she was picked up by Langford fastball to go to the Provincials with them. She hit her fifth homerun of the season in Provincials. In her 2019 softball season she had the most successful year to date, leading her team in slugging percentage, home runs, triples, pitching ERA and stolen bases when catching.
She is a softball pitcher and catcher.
In June she started summer ball (baseball) with BC Girls Selects in Surrey. This is a 16U girls team playing in the boys bantam single A division. From here she went to tryout for the girls national team, and made the team for the second straight year. The team consisted of 14 of the top female baseball players in BC. Ella and
Tess Sawkins, (ISN did a feature on Tess) both from the island, the rest from the mainland. They traveled to Nova Scotia to represent BC winning gold.
Team BC Girls Baseball brings home Gold for the first time in 9-yrs!!
To even be a part of this team of athletes and coaches is an amazing accomplishment.
Team BC went 6-0, undefeated, beating Quebec 2, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia 2, Quebec 1, and Alberta. Our pitchers threw four shutout games, with almost flawless defence behind them. To say they dominated would be an understatement.
In 6 games, BC outscored their opponents 64-12 and outhit their opponents 60-34 with five girls cranking home runs.
The roster had 11 pitchers, who threw 70% for strikes, 3 catchers combined held base runners to only 5 stolen bags and had solid performances behind the plate with only 3 passed balls (in 587 pitches). For the record ..Ella caught 26 of 38 innings in the tournament
These girls represented BC with pride, dignity, sportsmanship, and grace, and have come away with not only gold medals for their achievements, but memories and friendships that will last a lifetime.
We can proudly say now, that Ella is one of the top 14 female baseball players in Canada!
The coaching for these girls is second to none. Amazing, inspiring, knowledgeable coaches who push the athletes to be their very best, let’s not forget that no athlete gets to these levels without great coaching and Team BC has that in spades. Huge shout-out goes to coaches Marty Van Der Loos, Rob Ross and Andres Losin !!!
In sports just as in life you take your knocks and set backs but it’s what you do after that, that will determine what kind of person or athlete you’ll become. Well, Ella has certainly taken her share of knocks and criticism as being the first female baseball player ever in the Cowichan Valley to make the high performance team playing with “THE BOY”S” she would eventually get kicked off that team, sited as she was “Out of her league” or would get “Hurt”. In a day of social media she also had to endure the wrath of comments and ridicule all the while trying to to understand what all this means. Suffice it to say, this was a very low point not only for Ella but for her family as well.
In every person life comes a time where you come to a crossroad and have to decide what your next move is going to be and for Ella , she dusted herself off and decided not to listen to the comments and believe in herself. You see,the great ones when faced with rejection,disappointment ,defeat don’t let it bother them for too long and begin to set “Goals” even higher than what there were shooting for in the first place.Ella decided to try out for Team BC and as previously written ,we all know how that turned out !
Ella has set the bar in many way’s even if she doesn’t understand that right now, someone, (boy or girl) may read about her struggles and get some inspiration from that ! We live in a beautiful place with amazing community support but sometimes it’s not all gumdrops and candy canes,adversity is something everyone needs to go through to gauge who we are and what we’re made of.
Well Ella and her teammates are National Champions !!!
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