17-year-old Isabella Bortolotto is competing with and against some of the best female baseball players from Canada and around the world. (Roberta Bortolotto)

By Dan Marshall

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Nov 7, 2019 | 4:16 PM

NANAIMO — One of the region’s best baseball players is expanding her horizons.

In the last two years 17-year-old Isabella Bortolotto has gone to Cuba twice, and other destinations like Florida and Illinois in pursuit of her baseball dreams.

In 2019 alone she’s travelled over 40,000 kilometres.

The Nanaimo teen recently returned from the Roy Hobbs Women’s World Series in Fort Myers, Florida where her Toronto Fusion team won the title.

Bortolotto was the only BC player on the team, which also had two Americans and the majority of the roster from Ontario.

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“It was mostly about the experience for me,” said the young pitcher. “It built my confidence to hopefully help me earn a spot on Team Canada.”

She was one of the youngest players on a club that had an age range of 16 to 50.

The tournament culminated on a large stage, with the gold medal game played at the 10,000 seat Boston Red Sox park in south Florida called JetBlue Stadium.

A major goal for Bortolotto is to make the Senior Women’s national team.

She’ll go to Cuba for a third time Feb. 15-23 next year with the hopes it will eventually lead to an invite to Team Canada camp later in the summer of 2020.

Bortolotto already has a connection to the National Team because her coach Aaron Myette is the coach for Team Canada.

She’s been training with Myette for the past couple of years, making long day trips to the lower mainland for sessions at a large indoor facility.

Bortolotto has also spent time with some of the mid island’s highest profile male programs like the Mariners and Pirates, and has been playing organized baseball in Nanaimo since she was seven years old.

She got into the sport because of watching her older brother, and she could tell right away that she had an aptitude for the game.

“In T-ball I was getting kind of annoyed with the other kids who weren’t at the same level, I was about to quit but my mom got me up a level and I could keep up with them so that’s when I realized I was pretty good.”

After an incredibly busy 2019 there is some down time for Bortolotto but that will quickly lead into more training ahead of her return to Cuba in February.

She plans on playing some house league ball before hopefully donning the maple leaf in 2020.

dan@nanaimonewsnow.com

On twitter: @danmarshall77