Kaitlyn Bomberry
Kaitlyn Bomberry likes to be in the middle of the action. So she took her considerable athletic talent from the outfield to behind the plate. “I was playing for a team in Brantford last year and they needed a catcher, so I tried it and I liked it,” says the 14-year-old from Six Nations, one of the youngest players on Ontario’s U-16 softball team. “I get to play more. Instead of standing there, I’m always moving, and always in the game.” From a softball family, Bomberry has won provincial championships with the Brantford Bobcats and with Six Nations Minor Softball Association teams. She also plays hockey and rugby at Assumption College in Brantford where she’s going into Grade 10. Bomberry has played softball in a showcase tournament at Disney World, and was selected as one of two athletes to represent her region at the Right to Play youth leadership conference in Winnipeg last spring. She says she’s glad she was chosen to play in NAIG: “It brings me joy because I like playing with other Indigenous people, getting to know them, and just playing softball.” Bomberry knows exactly what she wants to do after high school, and that involves being right in the action, too. She plans to study Police Foundations at Mohawk College in order to become a police officer. It’s her first NAIG but, she says, hopefully not her last. “It’s fun. I like being there at McMaster,” she says. “I hope to play right until I’m 19.”