Pitcher represents Canada

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

The chance to represent his country has Oshawa’s Zachary McQuaid thinking about his future in baseball.

The Grade 10 Maxwell Heights student, who currently plays with the Oshawa U18 elite Legionaires, recently returned from Oklahoma, where he had been invited to represent Canada in the Junior Sunbelt Classic.

The tournament is seen as a competition for the top high school junior and sophomore players.

“I was in shock,” says McQuaid on receiving his invitation.

“This is one of the biggest things I’ve done in my baseball career…I was just in awe.”

Evolving from his T-ball years, McQuaid has always known his position on the field is meant to be on the mound and in a series of starts this year with the Legionaires, he has been seeing excellent success with his fastball.

“He’s made great strides, he’s worked hard,” says Daryl Macklem, McQuaid’s coach, noting the young pitcher’s curveball is in the stages of become a consistent and reliable pitch.

“He’s got a lot of room for growth,” Macklem says.

“But he’s come a long way over the course of the winter.”

Down in Oklahoma, McQuaid pitched in a pair of games for a total of eight innings and helped the Canadian club on the way to its first win at the event.

Playing alongside some of the top players in his age bracket, McQuaid says he now knows what he needs to do to take his own skills to the next level.

“I’m training really hard to just make sure my velocity goes up, that I sustain more pitches,” he says.

However, McQuaid is also focused on more than just the physical aspects of his game.

“Not so much physically, I work really hard everyday with my physical stuff, but mentally I’m a lot more confident pitching and I just know what I need to do to get better and stay focused when I’m on the mound,” he says.

Starting Grade 11 in the fall, it may be a little early for McQuaid to be making post-secondary, but the pitcher says he already has a few possibilities in mind, including a coaching program at a university or college in the United States, where he plans to continue playing ball.

McQuaid has also set his sights a little higher than that, aiming to one day enter the draft and purse a career in the major leagues.

With big dreams, the young pitcher is already well on his way. More than 200 kids who have participated in the Sunbelt Classic have gone on to successful careers in the majors.

For Macklem, a coach for almost two decades, McQuaid definitely has the potential for a successful career, his style reminiscent of former major leaguer Chris Kemlo (drafted by the New York Yankees in 2001), a player Macklem coached during his junior years.

“Zack has a lot of potential, he’s only going to get better,” he says.

“It’s not going to come easy. The more he works at it, takes it seriously, and trains the right way and continues the path that he’s on, anything can happen.”