Rimbey's Brooke Cameron has found a unique route to continue her softball career.
Cameron has joined the St. Clair College Saints of the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association, where she will play under scholarship for the next four years. She will study dental hygiene while attending the Windsor, Ont. college.
Cameron tried out through an app called Next College Student Athlete (NCSA), which connects middle and high school athletes with college coaches.
"You upload videos of your defence and offence and then you fill in stats and stuff on it, and then you can contact coaches from all over the world on it. Then you just wait for responses," she said about the process.
And the success doesn't stop there for Cameron. She just found out that she made the team for Softball Alberta out of about 250 girls, so it will be a busy time for Cameron.
She will head to Ottawa for Nationals for her College team around Thanksgiving, and come January she is off to Surrey, B.C. with her Softball Alberta team for the Canada Cup, along with a tournament in Edmonton among other places.
"We go to the Canada Summer Games in Newfoundland in August of 2025," said Cameron.
The 18-year-old has always had sports in her life. She actually started off in baseball at a young age, later playing AA. She also enjoyed basketball, but since COVID-19 hit, she wasn't able to play, as all of the programs were shut down.
"Probably in the summer of 2019 I joined a (team) in Sylvan Lake to try out fastball, because I didn't want to play with the boys anymore," she said with a laugh.
When she decided softball was the sport for her, she went to Edmonton to play with the River City Hornets and played there for two years.
For the past two years, she played in Calgary for Southern Alberta Revolution.
Cameron plays first base and mostly right field. She has already started playing ball in Windsor and starts her school portion in September.
