Hitting the big time

Shirley Lewis May explains how a bunch
of local girls took on the pros and wiped 'em

On the long weekend, Queen's .birthday weekend, we put together a softball team. The whole side only got together one week before the actual carnival.
We then went over to Mt Isa as the underdogs, I'd say, 'cause it was the first time we'd taken a side over there. And we kicked butt!!
Yeah, we've got our own softball team, the Jurnkurakurr softball team, but there were a few girls that couldn't go away that were on our side. So we rounded up a few other players here in Tennant Creek, formed a team and went over to Isa.
Our first game was against one of the top sides and we beat them 9-1. It was a good game. That game gave us confidence for the rest of the games. In the second game, we played the third lowest team, and we came a draw with them! They probably took us lightly, but that was alright.
We won the third game 4-1 against the top team who won the tournament last year. We thrashed them. That put us straight into the Grand Final and the others played off to see who'd play us in the Grand Final.
We had to play that same team again, last year's winners, and from there we just killed them 5-1! Yep, it was good.
Everyone played really well and at the presentation we cleaned up the trophies too. We got Classic Catch of the carnival, we had Player of the Series, and Umpire's Choice in the Grand Final. We took home all the trophies as well!
This would be the fourth year that the competition's been running I'd say. Yeah, we just walked in and cleaned up, bought back the shield, the Margaret Trindle Memorial shield, so we've got that here, ready to take it back next year and defend it again I suppose.
It was a good trip because out of that we were asked by a lady who comes from the A.C.T to go over to another indigenous women's softball carnival in Wollongong NSW. It's on at the end of December, early January.
After that they'll be picking a touring side to tour New Zealand and Canada and there are a couple of girls on our side that have a good chance of getting into that touring side, to tour New Zealand and Canada. It's a national, indigenous team. It's up to the girls and hopefully businesses in town to help with a bit of promotion! We do fundraising ourselves, selling chocolates and raffles.
In NAIDOC Week, we hope to have a stall, I'm approaching some people to get sponsorship from them as well. Yeah, anyone out there - we need money! It's about $1500 per person to go over. It can be done, it's just up to the girls. We're hoping to take over about twenty, like there'll be sixteen girls, two coaches, a scorer and a manager to look after us.