Six teams in northwestern Ontario are trying to get into the Women’s Baseball World Cup in 2024
Even though the Canadian women’s national baseball team has already qualified for the World Cup championship next year, they won’t be taking it easy on the field this week in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Team Canada is one of six international teams playing in the 2024 World Cup Group A Qualifiers, which start on Tuesday. The Group B Qualifiers will be played in Japan next month.
But even though Canada has already earned its spot in next year’s World Cup, which will also be held in Thunder Bay, head coach Anthony Pluta said that the third-ranked team still has something to prove.
“Yes, we don’t have to win to be able to go in next year,” said Pluta. “We don’t want to fall too far in the rankings and almost feel like we don’t deserve to be at the World Cup. We’re trying to get in by being nice.”
Canada’s first game of the tournament will be Tuesday at Baseball Central at 7:30 p.m. ET, when they play Mexico.
“I think you’ll see us play baseball in a never-give-up, grind-style,” Pluta said. “We have some pitchers who throw hard on the mound. We’ve got some strength at the plate.
“We’ll be a team that works well together and can go out and grind out as many wins as we’re supposed to have.”
WATCH | Canadian players work out one last time before the games start:
Pluta said that leadership is important if the team is going to work as a single unit on the field, since the players come from all over Canada.
“Some of the older and more experienced players who have been here longer can make the younger players feel welcome by doing things off the field that bring the team together and give them new experiences.”
That includes going to see the Thunder Bay Border Cats play last Friday in a Northwoods minor league game. But Pluta said that the busy schedule in Thunder Bay won’t leave much time for team building off the field this week.
Remembering ‘baseball’s supposed to be fun’ 
Veteran infielder Zoe Hicks said when it comes to any pre-game jitters that may be felt by newer players, it’s a matter of “reminding them that it is a game, right?”
“It might be a little bit more pressure, it might be a little bit of a bigger stage than they’re used to,” said Hicks, who plays on both the Canadian national women’s baseball and softball teams. “But baseball is supposed to be fun, and we all love it so much.
“So just to be able to take that breath and say, ‘OK, we’re focusing on the simple things, right?’ Catching the ball, throwing the ball, playing the game, how we love it.”
Hicks got into baseball by chance, after the Team Manitoba coach saw her playing ball with her senior team in her hometown of Boissevain.
She then got an invite to play with the Manitoba team at the national championships, which were being hosted in Stonewall that year.
“I said: ‘Sure, why not? Might as well,'” Hicks said. “I was home from college and was just looking for something to do. I kind of stuck with it every summer since then.”
‘OK,we’re focusing on the simple things, right?’ Catching the ball, throwing the ball, playing the game, how we love it.”– Zoe Hicks, Team Canada infielder
And while she plays both high-level baseball and softball, she doesn’t have a preference when it comes to those sports.
“The day-in, day-out of baseball and softball is very different,” Hicks said. “Softball is super-high intensity, very quick.
“You have to be on all the time,” she said. “Baseball is very much relaxed. You have time, you can kind of take a breath and make a play. So I think it’s cool to bounce back and forth between the two and to be able to appreciate the differences.”
One player who admits she’s feeling some pre-tournament nerves is Ela Day-Bedard, who’s playing her first season with the national team.
“Of course I’m nervous, but it’s a good nervous,” she said. “I’m nervous where you’re excited to get started.
“I take a deep breath, and at night I talk to my dad a lot, and he’s just like, ‘do your own thing,’ right?” Day-Bedard said. “You got here. That was the hardest part. And now just do your own thing.”
Team Canada will face Korea, China, Australia and the United States over the next week, and Pluta admits there are some uncertainties. This is her first international competition, apart from last summer’s friendship exhibition series against the United States.
“I’ve heard rumours of different teams having phenomenal athletes,” Pluta said. “I know a lot of the players that we played in the friendship series with the U.S. last year are coming back. There’s some new ones that that we’ll see in the mix. But to me, we’re just going to take every game as it goes and we’ll see what happens.”
WATCH | Meet the crew who’ve put in hours of work to get the fields ready:
One thing that is certain, however, is people who go to Baseball Central and Port Arthur Stadium to watch the games this week will be treated to some great baseball.
“I think most people, when they come watch women’s baseball, they’re surprised by how good it is,” Pluta said. “There is really no difference other than some of the power and speed that the game takes place at.
“We don’t have the 90-plus [mph] pitching that you might see on a on a guys’ team, but we do have the ability to do everything else that that they do,” Pluta said. “We have hitters that’ll hit home runs. We have hitters that’ll bunt and run. We have pitchers that throw really hard.”
A full schedule of this week’s games is avaialble on the Baseball Canada website.