An Okotoks Mosquito baseball player ' s once in a lifetime trip to Japan wasn ' t lost in translation.
Ten-year-old Okotokian Braeden Asuchak was honoured as one of the Kids of the Year among the 75 children invited to attend the event at the 2012 World Children ' s Baseball Fair (WCBF), July 22-30 in Mie, Japan.
“ I won it and it ' s pretty cool because it ' s something that out of hundreds of kids I was one of the four that won,” said Asuchak who shared the award with three friends from New Zealand, Venezuela and Japan.
Asuchak said his spirit for the game was the reason he earned the honour.
“ It ' s an award for standing out,” he said. “ There was a song I sang every day called the WCBF theme song and I did it before the practices started and after.
“ It was lots of fun because everyone knew me then.”
Asuchak, who is entering Grade 5 at St. Mary ' s School in Okotoks in September, was one of just five Alberta children selected from a pool of hundreds of applicants to make the jaunt to Japan.
Asuchak ' s face became a familiar one in the land of the rising sun where the Okotoks native was interviewed on national television.
“ They picked me as one of the kids to be on live TV,” he said. “ I would always have to get a translator and they would just ask me questions.”
His national exposure and international awards were exciting in and of themselves, but Asuchak said what he will remember most from the trip to Japan was the bonds he formed.
“ The (highlight) was meeting all my friends, all the friends from the other countries,” said Asuchak who made a special connection with a French peer. “ He was from France and I didn ' t know his actual name, but we called him goof because he ' s really funny.”
The WCBF was established in 1989 by Major League Baseball ' s long-time home run king Hank Aaron and his power-hitting Japanese counterpart Sadaharu Oh, who holds the professional baseball homerun record 868 dingers.
The home-run king himself made an appearance at one of the training sessions.
“ It was really cool,” Asuchak said of meeting Oh. “ We had to get a translator, he never actually told us the drills, he only watched them.”
The event is held annually, but Canada ' s participation is characterized by one province being selected to go on a given year.
Asuchak, a member of the Tier II provincial champion Okotoks Mosquito Outlaws, picked up some skills alongside contemporaries from around the world and picked up on the Japanese variations of the game.
“ The first three days we didn ' t play and then everyday after that we played for about seven days. It was different because they play different than us, with different rules, their batting box is different, with back catching you have to stay in one position,” Asuchak said. “ There are still quite a few skills that I learned in Canada that they have in Japan too.”
Okotoks resident Bob Dyck was the chaperone for the Canadian contingent on the trip.
