It was a trip quite a few years in the making for the Hay River Heat and it ended up being a trip worth its weight in gold when it was all over.
The men's fastpitch squad traversed to Dawson City, Yukon this past weekend to play in the Discovery Days tournament and ended winning the whole thing by beating a local team from the host community by a score of 16-14 in the final on Sunday.
Heat first baseman Glenn Smith said it was a bit of a wild final.
"We got the lead early, they came back and took the lead, but we got a bunch in the sixth inning and held them off," he said.
It was a six-team tournament with two pools of three to start in the round-robin on Aug. 8, though the Heat didn't play their first game until the following day. The Heat won both of their opening contests to receive a bye through to the semifinal, where they would end up meeting some fellow travellers from the NWT in the form of Inuvik.
They ended up winning the unofficial battle of the territory to get to the final, where they opened up an 8-0 lead after the second inning.
"We were feeling good with that start," said Smith. "(Dawson) was coming off of a semifinal against a team from Whitehorse and everything was going great."
Dawson even lost a couple of key players to injury in the early going, Smith added, but that didn't faze them at all as they managed to hit their way back into the game and eventually took a 14-10 lead into the sixth inning.
That's where the Heat's bats would come to life again as they scored that bunch Smith spoke about earlier - six, to be exact - to take a 16-14 lead. A three-up, three-down seventh inning sealed the deal for the Heat and the championship.
The title came with a trophy and an actual ounce of gold, worth around $3,300 as of press time.
It didn't make the trip home, though. Smith said the team ended up selling it for around $3,000.
Smith did say, however, that it was a wonderful weekend, one that had been talked about for a while among the guys.
"We had heard about it and we made the commitment last year to try and get over there," he said. "Terry Rowe was the guy who really brought it together. He started planning, we got the hotels booked and people started booking flights. Some people decided to drive over."
There was a bit of help from their friends as well, he added, as three players from Yellowknife - Devin Penney, Chris Cahoon and Mike Auge - helped fill out the ranks.
There was no word on whether there would be a defence of their title, but Smith said never say never.
