Baseball Canada announced the women’s national team showcase begins tomorrow in Trois-Rivières, Québec ©Baseball Canada

Baseball Canada women's national team will return to in-person activities for the first time in two years when the women’s national team showcase begins tomorrow (August 8) in Trois-Rivières, Québec.

The camp will take place from August 8 to 13.

Forty-one athletes will take part in the six-day camp, partaking in physical testing, baseball-specific testing and inter-squad games.

The camp will be hosted at Stade Quillorama, the home of the Frontier League’s Trois-Rivières Aigles.

Women’s national team programme director André Lachance said: "Like the rest of the world, the past year and a half has been a challenge for our programme so having this showcase camp is something that we feel fortunate for, and we intend on taking advantage of our time together."

The coaching staff will be led by Aaron Myette, who took over from Lachance as head coach in 2019 and led the squad to a bronze medal at the Pan American Baseball Confederation Women’s Baseball Pan Am Championships.

Team Canada won softball bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics ©Getty Images
Team Canada won softball bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics ©Getty Images

Myette will be supported by former players turned coaches - Hannah Martensen, Kate Psota and Ashley Stephenson, while Anthony Pluta will handle pitching coach duties for the first time.

Guest coaches scheduled to attend include former women’s national team athlete Vanessa Riopel, former women’s national team athlete and coach Patricia Landry and Manitoba’s Jeremy Culleton.

Hayley Lalor, one of the athletes who will participate at the camp, said she is "mostly looking forward to getting to play a bunch of games and be out there with a lot of the girls that I’ve played with before who are my friends."

She added that it is "just a chance to get to do something that we haven’t got to do in quite a while."

COVID-19 caused the postponement of the 2020 World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) Women’s Baseball World Cup, with the next event still to be determined. 

Canada won a bronze medal at the last World Cup event in 2018.

They rank third in the latest WBSC women's baseball world rankings.