The Toronto Blue Jays released a seven-minute YouTube video Monday chronicling the girls baseball camp the Major League Baseball team hosted earlier this month in honour of Amanda Asay, the 33-year-old former Prince George resident and national baseball star who died early this year after a skiing accident in Nelson.
The camp was held in Nelson, featuring several of Asay's former teammates on the Canadian women's national baseball team.
The Blue Jays made a $10,000 donation to the team and Baseball Canada has retired Asay's number 19 from the women's program in her honour.
The video shows the young girls who took part in the camp all wore special shirts sporting Asay's number.
Asay’s multi-sport abilities were evident at a young age. She came up through ranks in minor hockey in Prince George and played for the triple-A midget Cougars and in 2005 made the provincial U-18 team, the same year she also joined the women's national baseball team. A graduate of College Heights Secondary School, she went to Brown University, an elite Ivy League school in the United States, in 2006 on a combined academic/hockey scholarship.
Asay was the longest serving member of the women’s national team program, capturing five WBSC Women’s Baseball World Cup medals including bronze in 2006, 2012 and 2018 and silver in 2008 and 2016. She was also part of Canada’s historic silver medal performance at the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto – the first time that women’s baseball was included in a major, multi-sport games.
