Mayor Greg Dionne speaks at the WBSC 2025 Men's Softball World Cup press conference inside the Art Hauser Centre alongside local bidding committee members Ian Litzenberger (left) and Derek Smith (right) on Jan. 10, 2023. (Logan Lehmann/paNOW staff)

By Logan Lehmann

play ball

Prince Albert awarded pair of major Men’s Softball World Cup events

Jan 10, 2023 | 1:12 PM

Prince Albert will be a hot destination for softball fans around the world in the coming years.

During a press conference at the Art Hauser Centre on Tuesday morning, it was announced that the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) has awarded a 2024 WBSC Men’s Softball World Cup Group Stage and the 2025 World Cup Final to the City of Prince Albert.

Members of the local bidding committee, Ian Litzenberger and Derek Smith, were on hand to make the announcement where Smith said these events were eight years in the making.

“It’s huge for the City, the committee, and for the softball community,” he said. “To be able to put on another world-class event in both 2024 and 2025, we’re going to get the fans out and it’s going be exciting around the ballpark. It’s been a long go in the making, we started the whole process about eight years ago when we bid to get (the 2018 U19 Men’s World Cup) here and pulled off a very successful tournament.”

Prince Albert Mayor Greg Dionne was also on hand for the announcement and was excited about these future tournaments, but he also said there’s still a lot of work to be done.

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“We did realize that once we finished some tournaments that we had here, one of the score clocks need to be replaced,” he said. “Another thing is that one of the fields is too small, so it’s just minor upgrades like that. There will be a bit more seating too because we know what happened last time with the seating so we’re going to work on more seating and more abilities like that.”

Team Canada is currently ranked second in the WBSC official rankings after capturing the silver medal at the 2022 Men’s Softball World Cup.

Saskatchewan has hosted the Men’s Softball World Cup twice before with both tournaments being played in Saskatoon. The first was in 1988 when the United States won gold over New Zealand and the second was in 2015 when Canada defeated New Zealand to capture the championship.

Both events will be held at Max Power Ball Fields in Prime Ministers Park in July 2024 and 2025.

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logan.lehmann@pattisonmedia.com

Twitter: @lloganlehmann