Steinbach Sports Heritage

1996: The Southeast Hurlers are sporting a perfect two wins-no losses record, after a rematch against Winnipeg opponents at the A.D. Penner Park, showcasing a game never before seen by sports fans in the Southeast.

When talk turns to “hurling”, the names of great baseball pitchers like Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson usually come to mind, but a pair of Irish dairy farmers, who have settled in the Southeast, are hoping they can change that.

Pat Donnelly (pictured above) and Tom Dooley brought their hurling skills along from “the old country” and are trying to get their Canadian friends interested in what they say is one of the world’s oldest sports.

To the casual observer, the sport of hurling would appear to be a cross between field hockey and lacrosse, with a soccer net and football goal posts thrown in to make it more interesting.

A hand-stitched leather ball is carried, batted or thrown towards the opponents’ end of a soccer-sized field, using a stick fashioned from an ash root, which resembles a field hockey stick and is about the length of an axe handle.

Donnelly and Dooley organized a “team,” garnered sponsors for equipment and sweaters, and arranged an initial match against Winnipeg opponents in July. The match played in Winnipeg was won by a narrow margin by the rural team, bolstered by a few young “imports” holidaying in Canada at the time. Ronan Middleton, T.J. Dooley and Derek Middleton, were happy to show their Canadian hosts just how the game could be played.

The Southeast hurling team brought the game home Sept. 22, when they hosted the Winnipeg team for a return match at the A.D. Penner Park in Steinbach. The rural team won again.

The Southeast Hurlers have welcomed players of all ages to field the necessary 15-man squad, and players are signed up more on their desire to play rather than individual skills at the game. As more players become involved, additional teams could be made up of more adults or youngsters approximately all the same age, just like soccer, according to Donnelly.

-Carillon Archives

Eighteen-year-old Andrew Amsden is consumed with cricket, and for good reason. The 1995 graduate of the Steinbach Regional Secondary School, who emigrated to Canada from Britain with his family in 1989, spent the summer playing for Canada’s Under 19 National Cricket Team.

While Amsden’s classmates at the SRSS naturally are more familiar and more concerned with sports such as volleyball, basketball, hockey, baseball, or perhaps curling, Amsden is ensconced in cricket, and understandably so.

Amsden has just started his first year of general studies at the University of Winnipeg. In the future, he hopes to go into business with his uncle in England or perhaps study physical education. But for the time being, cricket is number one. According to his mother, Christine, “Andrew lives and breathes cricket.”

Andrew has applied to the Yorkshire Academy in England, which is a pure cricket school near the home where they once lived. If Andrew is accepted, it may open up the possibility of playing professional cricket in England in the future.

Cricket has a tradition of excellence in England, and is one of three sports that Amsden grew up playing in elementary school in Yorkshire, along with rugby and football (soccer).

From 1990-94, he travelled several times with Manitoba teams to Toronto and Vancouver for cricket tournaments and national team try-outs.

This summer, Amsden was exceptionally busy, spending two weeks in Holland with the national team at an international tournament, where the Canadian squad finished with a 2-4 record against some of the toughest nations in the world.

Coming home, he then travelled Vancouver for two weeks with the Manitoba senior team and another week with the national team. The summer was capped off with a two-week family vacation to England.

The 1999-2000 Eastman Selects, based in Steinbach, won their second Manitoba AAA Championship over the Winnipeg Warriors.
Front Row: Doug Sonnenberg, Richmond Gosselin (coach), Justin Tetrault, Bob Smith (manager),
Graham Po***ck (coach), Drew Bagnall, Doug Thiessen (coach), Krister Toews
Middle Row: Barrett Rott (stickboy), Patrick Carriere (AP), Brad Clark, Patrick Gauthier, Brady Witzke, lan White, Remi Gosselin, Jeremy Hiebert, Joel Rempel, Tim Plett, Dolly Sekhon (trainer)
Back Row: Lucille Rempel (manager), Colin Tetrault, Tyler Goulet, Alex Lentowich, Rob Smith, Garreth Rempel, Kevin Mamchuk, Matt Funk, Ivan Koop (coach)

The 1959 Steinbach Huskies lost the Provencher League championship to the St. Pierre Braves in the final game of a best-of-five final that drew a crowd of more than 1300 at the St. Pierre Arena. But the team captured the Molloy Cup after defeating Altona.
Members of the team were: John Barkman, Boyd Diamond, Norm “Chuck” Toews, Jim Hossack, Gordon Kreutzer, Peter Guenther, Denver Wiebe, Ralph Rempel, Helmut Pankratz, Harold Kreutzer, Gilbert Peters, Dennis Guenther, LaVern Loewen, Harold Wiebe

The Steinbach Millers U18 hockey team get a geography lesson before heading out for their longest road trip of the year. Team manager Bob Loewen and coach Randy Penner display a map outlining the just over 2,000 km route from Steinbach to Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Steinbach U18 Millers had been scoring one-sided victories in the first two months of the 1979-80 season and their trip to Salt Lake City, Utah in December proved to be no different.

With the exception of the first game against the host team, which Steinbach won by a single goal, teams from Salt Lake, Phoenix, Arizona and Aspen, Colorado provided little opposition for the Millers on their way to a six-game winning streak. The Millers completed the tournament undefeated, outscoring the opposition 59-10 in six games.

James Loewen, a member of that regional U18 team, later described the trip to Salt Lake City in his As I See It column in The Carillon as “the most exciting Christmas gift any of us had ever received.”

“My dad, Bob Loewen, was the manager that year and he had the idea that it would be a marvelous way to end our minor hockey careers, with a big bang.”

On December 24, 1979, around 20 members of the Steinbach U18 Millers were getting ready to leave for an international hockey tournament in Salt Lake City Utah, Loewen writes.

Many of the players who had been playing together since Atom hockey would be going their separate ways after U18 hockey.

Bob Loewen and coach Randy Penner assembled a team that was truly representative of southeastern Manitoba, with players from St Pierre, La Broquerie, Blumenort, Niverville, Morris, Dominion City and Steinbach.

Loewen says you can just imagine what an experience flying to a tournament would be for a bunch of 15-and-16-year-olds. As every other kid who laces up a pair of skates, Loewen and his teammates all dreamed of one day playing professional hockey, and when the team arrived at the airport, loaded their equipment, and boarded the plane, it seemed to them that their dream was coming true.

The Millers ended up winning the tournament in Salt Lake and later in the year lost in the finals of another tournament in Calgary to a guy named Brett Hull.

The Eastman ‘B’ slow-pitch team won the bronze medal at the MSOS 55 Plus Summer Games, held June 17-19, 1997 at Gimli. Members of the team are, front row: Jake Peters, Pat Tetlock, Evelyn Enns, Steve Derewianchuk, Jake Wallman and George Penner. Back row: George Wiens, Walter Redlick, Jim Neustaedter, Elbert Toews, Ray Rempel, Rollie Blanchard, Alf Tetlock and Florence Pankratz.

1996: He’s big. Very big. At six-feet, four-inches and 220 pounds, Giroux native Dean Sproule is the largest pitcher at the Winnipeg Goldeyes 1996 spring training camp.

The 22-year-old hurler is one of 13 pitchers at the main camp trying to earn a spot with the defending Northern League champions. Sproule knows it’s a long shot, but is thrilled with the opportunity to show his stuff to manager Hal Lanier and pitching coach Bob Kipper.

Eleven of the pitchers in camp received previous invitations to attend spring training. The other two, Sproule and 19-year-old Rodney Spek of Gladstone caught Lanier’s attention at a one-day open camp on May 11 at Winnipeg Stadium, the Goldeyes home field. These two were picked out of seven pitchers to attend the two-week main camp.

Sproule attended the same one-day camp last year and says the coaches showed some interest at that time, but it did not materialize into an invitation to the main camp.

Goldeyes general manager John Hindle says Lanier was impressed with Sproule’s pitching at the one-day open camp.

“He threw strikes and was clocked in the mid-80’s. Hal liked what he saw; he wants to take a better look.”

Hindle says whether Sproule makes the team or not, “it is an opportunity for him to work out with professional baseball players and to gain from that experience.”

The hard-throwing Sproule has spent the past three years pitching at United States colleges. The past two years in North Dakota at Valley City State University and before that he spent a year at Southwestern Community College in Iowa.

During the summers he spent pitching for the Carillon Jr. Sultans and last year with the St Boniface Native Sons of the Manitoba Senior Baseball League.

A physical education student at Valley City State University , Sproule played all his bantam and midget baseball at Friedensfeld in the Carillon Minor Baseball League.

Sproule will be returning to Valley City in the fall to continue working towards his physical education degree.

-Carillon Archives

August 11, 1977: Steinbach fastball teams fared well in tournaments this weekend. While the Stealers were winning in Winkler, the Steinbach Pups, Eastman representatives for the Manitoba Summer Games, were capturing top prize money in the annual St. Pierre tournament. Members of the team included: Front row, left to right, Larry Stoesz, Mark Thompson, Marc Phaneut, Curt Loewen, and Bob Kehler. Second row, Ken Krentz, George Kornelson, Kelly Barkman, Darryl Penner, Roger Loewen, Ralph Krentz and Ken Neufeld.
-Carillon Archives

1964: Six Steinbach teachers (Jake Epp, John Bestvater, Elbert Toews, Harry Olfert, Peter Dick and Hank Fast) were double winners at a tournament at Camp Shilo when they defeated the Winnipeg Buffaloes to win the Western Canadian Men’s “B” Volleyball title and downed a United States Air Force team from Grand Forks for the tournament championship.

Paced by Peter Dick, who was named the outstanding player of the tournament, Steinbach dropped only two games in the eight team round-robin tournament.

The teachers were equally successful in a warmup to the Western Canadians at the Saskatchewan Open in Moose Jaw in February.

Eight men’s teams and six women’s teams were entered in the event held at the Saskatchewan Technical Institute.

The men’s elimination round would split teams in two divisions, with the winners of the first game going into ‘A’ Division and the losers into ‘B’ Division.

The Steinbach Teachers drew the University of Saskatchewan as opponents in the opener, and the Manitobans took two straight, putting them in ‘A’ Division.

Jake Epp set what must have been a record, when he served for 15 straight points in the first contest.

The other teams in the ‘A’ Division were the Regina YMCA Chiefs, the Moose Jaw Toilers and the University of Saskatchewan Huskies.

In the round-robin, Steinbach lost twice to the Toilers, 12-10 and 10-8 with a time limit set on games.

Steinbach then proceeded to win their next four, finishing in second place behind the undefeated Moose Jaw Toilers.

In the semi-finals, Steinbach lost to the Regina Chiefs in the first game, won the second handily, and then squeezed by with a 16-14 come-from-behind victory in the third, for a rematch with the Toilers. They went on to beat the Moose Jaw team in the finals, 15-8 and 15-5, giving them first place. Their record for the tournament was 10 wins and three losses.

In the Western Canadian Open, the teachers went one better, losing just two games on the way to the double championship.

-Carillon Archives with files from Ralph Friesen