Jessica Lees from Arcola received a Gold Glove award for her fielding advantage during her last season with North Dakota's Jamestown Jimmies'. The pitcher, who received a four-year scholarship with the team, will be finishing up her last season this year.
Receiving a Gold Glove award is an accomplishment that shows her dedication to the sport throughout the years. Lees has been playing since she was five years of age and played for teams in Arcola, the Moose Mountain region, Weyburn and Regina before graduating and finding her place at Jamestown.
Lees, who studies Psychology at Jamestown, hopes to continue to play ball in the years to come. "One thing about Canada is that we can play until we die. In the States, you don't see senior teams, where in Canada we have those teams. So, I'm excited that I will be able to continue ball. And I'd love to continue coaching."
Lees says that her success as a pitcher has come from her drive to become better. "Practice and just the drive to do it. Coming from a small town, you almost have to prove yourself. My coach says it a lot actually. Get out there and prove yourself. Prove that you want to be there and prove that you can be there. Prove that you are better than them and prove that you want to be better than them."
While Lees enjoys her summers off, she knows that going back to school means getting back to work. "He [the coach] gets us pitchers out there more than the regular team because we have to. We need a lot of work. When season comes, we'll be pitching twice a day, once in practice and once on our own."
While the season doesn't officially start until Feb. 1, the team starts practicing at the start of the school year. "Our coach gives us about a week to settle in and then we start usually the following Monday. We'll start outdoor practices and we'll go to a tournament just to see what we need to improve on and what we are good at."
Playing ball at Jamestown translates into a lot of travel time during the season. "Last year, we had 56 games in 54 days. It's a really short season because the weather is similar to up here. Sometimes we have to drive eight hours just to play a team that is located two hours away from us because we have to go where the weather allows us to play."
"We usually start out our season with a trip to Arizona. We go to Tuscan. The actual tournament is about a month long. There are hundreds of teams over there. But we are only there for about ten days. And that is at the beginning of March. So we take about a month to get our team ready for that. And from that tournament on, we are playing."
In terms of balancing school and ball, Lees says "we do lots of homework on the bus. Our teachers at Jamestown really understand us and where we are coming from. We miss a lot of Fridays, but they do understand so they will give us our work ahead of time. You just have to make sure that you get it done."
One of the mental challenges that Lees has faced is the length of the season. "Practicing when you don't play until March and you started in August, it kind of starts to mess with your head. Practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing, having to get up for six a.m. runs, and things like that. It is definitely hard, but you just have to keep pushing yourself because it is worth it in the end."
Lees advice for young pitchers would be to "just keep practicing. If you want to do it, just keep doing it. A lot of pitchers give up because they get frustrated or they don't know what to do. Just keep pushing at it, because you will develop your own way of doing things. You don't have to be the fastest pitcher out there, you just have to have the urge to do it and you will succeed."
For Lees, all of the hard work comes to a head at the end of each season. "There is a national tournament at the end of the year, which is the middle of May. It is called the DAC (Dakota Athletic Conference) and the team that ends up with the best record in our conference moves on to nationals and the winner of the DAC tournament also goes to nationals."
While Jamestown Jimmies has made it to nationals in the past, Lees team has not made it there yet. "That is definitely a goal of ours. To either have the best record in our conference or to win the DAC tournament. That would be really great."
