Waterloo, ON - Softball star Horn ready for new season with new club
An International Softball Federation world title and a Pan American Games gold medal.
Waterloo native Brandon Horn's incredible run around fastpitch's basepaths in 2015 will be hard to match.
He'll do his best.
Team Canada's slick second baseman, whose longtime club team, the Kitchener Hallman Twins, was mothballed at the end of last season, hitched his wagon to the Toronto Gators this year.
Brandon Horn
Annie Sakkab,The Record file photo
After 20 or so years in the game and several at the sport's highest level, Waterloo's Brandon Horn has friends scattered across the world, never mind in the Gators' dugout.
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ORIGINAL STORY by Christine Rivet, The Record
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Waterloo Region Record
WATERLOO — An International Softball Federation world title and a Pan American Games gold medal.
Waterloo native Brandon Horn's incredible run around fastpitch's basepaths in 2015 will be hard to match.
He'll do his best.
Team Canada's slick second baseman, whose longtime club team, the Kitchener Hallman Twins, was mothballed at the end of last season, hitched his wagon to the Toronto Gators this year.
The Gators are among an elite field — including four of the world's top-five ranked senior men's teams — destined for tournament play in St. Clements later this month at the Peter Hallman Memorial.
"Honestly, I'm not sure how the transition will go (with the Gators)," Horn, 30, a local plumber and Waterloo Collegiate grad said Friday. "I haven't switched teams very often in my career.
"But it's still the same game and we all have the same goal," added Horn, a finalist for last year's Kitchener-Waterloo and area athlete of the year award.
After 20 or so years in the game and several at the sport's highest level, Horn has friends scattered across the world, never mind in the Gators' dugout.
In fact, he'll be joined on the Toronto tournament team by seven mates from the Canadian national team — the same team which undid more than two decades of futility as Canada toppled the defending ISF champs from New Zealand in Saskatoon last year.
That same band of Canucks clipped Venezuela 2-1 in a gold-medal Toronto Pan Am match, a thriller at the Ajax Ballpark last summer.
Canada's senior men's squad doesn't have any tournaments scheduled for this season so Horn will have to get his softball fix closer to home.
Along with the Gators, Horn will see regular action in the South Perth Men's Fastball League with the Kitchener Cubs.
The Gators kick off their season at the International Softball Congress Canada East qualifier June 17-19 in Innerkip.
After that, the Toronto squad, ranked No. 2 in the world, reports to the Hallman Memorial in St. Clements from June 24-26.
Competing teams include the three-time defending ISC world club team champs, top-ranked Hill United from Six Nations, Ont., along with the New York Gremlins and the Scarborough Force, ranked No. 3 and No. 5, respectively.
Other competing teams in St. Clements include: the Elmira Expos, the Wiarton Nationals, the Shakespeare Falcons, the Toronto Batmen, the North East Drillers and the Kitchener Cubs, who will have to go without Horn for the duration of the event while he suits up with the Gators.
Action in St. Clements concludes on Sun., June 26 with the A-final set for 1 p.m. and the B-final to follow at 3 p.m.
The tourney will also feature an under-21 division with the New Hamburg Mustangs, the Tavistock Athletics, the Owen Sound Selects and the Stratford Cubs.
This year's ISC world tournament runs Aug. 12-20 in Moline, Ill.
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