Team ceasing operations, can’t find a major sponsor

By Darryl G. Smart
Sports Editor

INNERKIP — The glass slipper the Innerkip Eagles wore during the International Softball Congress world tournament this summer has been smashed to pieces. “It is with great disappointment that I announce that the Innerkip Eagles are ceasing operations for the upcoming 2008 fastball season,” manager Jeff Whetstone said in a press release. “Due to the inability to secure a sponsor, we will be unable to operate.” Whetstone said for the team to survive another season, it needed $20,000. Despite that, the writing was on the wall.
“We could have waited until Christmas to make a decision, but it wouldn’t be fair to the players,” Whetstone said. “But we all knew that this would happen eventually.”

This end comes on the heels of the team’s best season, which included an eighth-place finish at the ISC world tournament in Kitchener. “Finishing eighth at this year’s ISC tournament was one of our team’s highlights,” Whetstone said. The Eagles began their journey in 2000, winning the South Perth Men’s Fastball League, the Ontario Amateur Softball Association eliminations, the North American Fastball Association ‘AA’ and eastern Canadian championships.

“We won everything possible so the guys wanted to try it,” Whetstone said. So the Eagles’ next obvious step was to senior. For seven years, the Eagles gradually began to make a name for
themselves on the world stage, moving up the world ladder. In league play, the Eagles captured the 2005 title and lost to the Jarvis Merchants in the season’s final.

“The Eagles have been a mainstay in keeping the ISC Travel League alive and it is the unsung effort of the Jeff Whetstones in the game that sadly gets lost when a team can no longer operate,” ISC Hall of Famer Larry Lynch said. “Take pride in the fact that you have given
a lot of players the opportunity to play at the highest level and continue at the highest level. Teams across North America have bolstered their own by recruiting from small- town Innerkip.” And that’s exactly what is starting to happen.

While catcher Pat Humphries recently signed with the current world champion Farm Tavern, the rest of the Eagles will try to latch on with another senior team. Unfortunately, the numbers game may play a factor, thanks to a merger between the Kitchener Hallman Twins and Orillia Riversharks. As part of the merger, it was agreed the new team will consist of players from both squads, meaning a full team’s worth of players will be looking for a place to play.
Despite the Eagles folding, Whetstone said there were no regrets. “If you see where we started, not many people heard of Innerkip,” Whetstone said. “Now they know most of our guys.”

Darryl Smart
519-537-2341 ext. 258
dsmart@bowesnet.com
www.woodstocksentinelreview.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 9:59 am and is filed under ISC, Teams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.