Award winning ball player gears up to get back to school
- Angela Hill | October 09, 2017
After a successful year on the ball diamond, Kailey Ledoux is gearing up for school.
The 14-year-old won the best pitcher award at the U14 Girls Canadian Fast-Pitch Championship in Toronto this summer.
“I was very shocked, I didn’t really think it was real,” Ledoux said she was surprised.
“There was a lot of very good pitchers there.”
The award was a trophy, a glass box with a 3-D figure of a girl batting.
Saskatoon Phantom teammates Bryn Bohman and Madison Glynn also netted awards. Boham for best first baseman and Glynn, the tournaments most valuable player.
“It was really cool because we all work hard and when we don’t have team practices we go out and call each other to the diamond and practice with each other,” Ledoux said.
She added, she likes to see the improvement hard work can bring. This work ethic is going from the game to her Grade 9 classroom.
“Success isn’t given, it’s always earned,” she said.
“If you don’t work hard, then you are not going to get anywhere.”
Ledoux says it can be tough to balance sports and school, but says she gets homework done and then goes on to get as much training time in as possible.
This message of hard work in school also comes from her parents.
“We stress to all the kids that if you have a plan to go to post secondary, colleges or universities, your marks are going to have to be decent,” said dad and coach, Clint Ledoux.
All the Ledoux siblings Kailey, Kyra, 17, Kelsey, 11, and Karson, 8, play sports, baseball, fastball and hockey, just like their dad.
“When the kids were little they ended up following me pretty much, to the diamonds and the rinks, so that’s all they knew,” he said.
While backyard competition is fierce – Kailey tells a story of a soccer game that ends with the ball going over a fence – the sisters and brother are there to support each other at games.
“All my family members play hockey and ball, so I guess it’s just a family thing. From the time, I could walk I was playing these sports with my family,” she said.
“We all go to every game we can make it to, of course we have the sports we play so we can’t always make it to all the games, but we make it to as many as we can.”