Jordyn Mann

Davis McIver
of The Crossroads

Jordyn Mann of Dinsmore caught, pitched and played third base for Saskatchewan at Baseball Canada’s women’s under-21 invitational championship. Unfortunately, Saskatchewan finished at 0-4 at the tournament, held from Aug. 8 to 12 in Stonewall, Man.

Jordyn “caught really good,” said her mother, Shanda Mann. “The announcers mentioned that she was a strong catcher.”

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The team, which might have been the youngest there, was close a couple of times, Jordyn Mann said.

In their last game, against Quebec on Aug. 11, “We were really hoping for a win because it worked out that if we won that game, we would be fourth instead of Quebec,” she said.

Until the fourth inning, “We were close, like within six (runs) and then they just started hitting the ball and it didn’t go well,” she said. Quebec went on to win 16-0.

Mann caught in their first two games, a 15-0 loss to Nova Scotia, followed by a 15-2 loss to Manitoba, both on Aug. 9.

She pitched in the third, a 23-2 loss to Ontario the next day, and played third base against Quebec.

The Saskatchewan roster is young, “Because last year we had a bantam team, in U16, and we mostly just moved half of them up to play this age group, because there were too many overage players for U16,” Mann said.

She and two others on the team were 18 and the rest were 17 and 16, she said. Most of the other teams had players aged 19, 20 and even 21.

Quebec won the final, 9-1 over Ontario. They and Nova Scotia ended up with 4-2 records, including the playoffs, in the five-team event. Nova Scotia beat Manitoba 14-4 in the bronze-medal game.

Mann plans to keep trying out for provincial baseball.

“I will stick with it until I am too old,” she said.

She graduated from Dinsmore Composite School in June and plans to study kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan this fall. She was asked to join the U of S track and field team.

“But I decided not to do it,” Mann said. “I’m going to stick with ball because we’re going to be having camps every month. I enjoy it more than track. So I thought I better stick with that.”

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