Northern rivalries are a reality for pretty much every single sport in these parts – and certainly baseball is no exception.

Yet it was a prevailing sense of cooperation that would bring together 15 teams representing associations from North Bay, Timmins, the Ottawa Valley, Sudbury and Valley East this past weekend, gathering at the Terry Fox Sports Complex for a series of friendlies.

With the bulk of the Baseball Ontario provincial championships scheduled to take place over the course of the next two weekends, teams from the north were taking full advantage of one last chance to tinker with details at the plate, to fine-tune their defensive positional arrangements and such before their big event.

For infielder Alys Beyers and her 15U Sudbury Shamrocks teammates, the opportunity to play opponents of the same age is always welcomed given the fact that their summer schedule locally pits the crew against SMBA 18U house-league entries.

“When we play people our own age, we sometimes struggle with the timing,” said Beyers, a grade 11 student at Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School. “Against the 18U teams, the ball is coming in faster. That’s something that we need to work on.”

Having first picked up the sport of baseball at the age of four, Beyers has ventured off to also compete in fastpitch / fastball, before working her way back to a place of comfort. “I really like the (hardball) community,” she said. “I am friends with a lot of people here, I know a lot of the umpires.”

“And now, I am finally playing rep.”

For as much as she is dabbling with a variety of different positions, trying to learn the intricacies of shortstop and catcher – and even pitching - it is in the middle infield where she really wants to establish roots. “Second base is the base where I am most confident,” said Beyers. “I feel like I am in the middle of everything; I feel in control.”

And as anyone who has played any sport well knows, success can come at least as much as a result of all that is happening from the shoulders up for any athlete. “It’s all about our mindset in baseball,” said Beyers.

“If you miss a play, a lot of people will get down. I think it’s important to have an attitude of: so what. So what if it’s a bad play. You’ve got the whole game to improve yourself.”

With any luck at all, there remains plenty of improvement ahead for 11 year old Luc Legault Corriveau and the rest of the members of the Valley East 11U Jr Voyageurs. On Labour Day weekend, this crew will be welcoming as many as 10-12 teams or so to the nickel city, with Sudbury playing host to a set of all-Ontario Championships for a second straight year.

Though he first started to throw and catch at age three, Legault Corriveau has seen his game leap forward in recent years, even as he has adjusted last summer (and this one) to no longer facing pitches coming at you from the consistency of a mechanical device.

“Learning to hit is hard because the pitch won’t always be straight down the middle,” noted the grade 6 youngster at Ecole élémentaire catholique Jean-Paul II. “It can be inside and that’s one of the most hard places to hit it. You can only really try and place the ball if it’s in the middle.”

“If it’s inside, you want to hit it out front of the plate and if it’s outside, it will go to left-field,” opined the left-handed hitter. Of course, the switch to live pitching is just one of those key lessons that account for the progress that sees young players grow through the chaos of the U9 and under encounters to something that begins to look more and more like baseball.

“As kids, everybody (in the field) would go and chase every ball,” said Legault Corriveau. “Now, if the ball is hit to you, you take it. If it’s somewhere close to you, you can go help them.”

Otherwise, the instructions are clear: play your position.

In the case of this talkative lad, that is likely at shorstop, at least given his druthers.

“I get a lot of balls hit to me there and I can cover a lot more places,” he said. “But I also like to play everywhere. It’s good to practice everywhere because then you can tryout for any position and you have a better chance.”

Expanding the tools in his toolbox, Legault Corriveau is also spreading his wings on the mound, incorporating a change-up to his repertoire that started, as most do, with nothing more than a four-seam fastball. “A change-up is tougher to throw because I have to release the ball differently,” he said.

“You release it higher because it drops down. I am still figuring out the release point.”

Having been to provincials before, Legault Corriveau is among the group of Jr Voyageurs that sees playing on his home field as a definite advantage. “I can go to my house and relax,” said the young man who belted out a triple on a line drive to right field, earlier this summer in Blezard Valley, his best hit of the year.

“When we are in hotels, a lot of the times, there are a lot of people running around and making noise. It’s going to be a lot more quiet – and I don’t have to wake up really early.”

While most of the local rep baseball contingent still have provincials to look forward to, the Sudbury 18U Shamrocks have just returned from West Hill, placing third with a very good showing. The locals opened with a 13-2 win over the Whitby Canadians as pitchers Cole Trottier and Christoper Kremastiotis holding the GTA'ish crew at bay.

One really bad inning spelled disaster as Sudbury dropped their second outing to the eventual provincial champs, beaten 13-1 by Forest Glade as Hunter Levesque and Rylee Loyer took to the mound. A 15-2 victory over the Guelph Royals served as a wonderful bounce-back, with the Shamrocks pitch depth evident this game in the form of Levi Yuskiw and Lucas Gutscher.

A semi-final battle with West Mountain was as competitive as they come as the SMBA reps succumbed, in the end, by a final score of 5-2.