Fall ball baseball back

The Kahnawake Warhawks’ fall ball team is back in action this year, giving players from Kahnawake as well as a few others from Chateauguay, Mercier, and Beauharnois a chance to extend their baseball season into the cooler days.

Following their first weekend of action, the fall ball Warhawks are 1-1, with their first loss coming against the Pierrefonds Dodgers, a team Warhawks head coach Jesse Lahache expects to have a strong season.

They have a great baseball program out in that end. We just ran into a really good team. Their pitching was excellent, their hitting was phenomenal. They were hitting everything,” said Lahache.

He said that he thinks the Warhawks can have a pretty good year, too.

“We’re a pretty solid team from top to bottom. I have a good pitching staff, my defense can be great. We just need to see how it is when they show up to the field. They all have the talent to put Ws up,” said Lahache.

“I think we have what it takes to have a good run at it. We have a decent team, a lot of competitive kids, so I think we’ll be all right.”

Lahache said that having players from outside the community play with kids from town is a boon, not just something to do out of necessity.

“It’s good because you make friends for life,” said Lahache.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time. Talking to other coaches, people, associations over the years, you exchange information. I just reach out to other associations and say ‘listen, if you have a team, I need some players, if they’re willing to come down, send them this way.’”

Last year, that’s how he brought in the players from outside Kahnawake, many of whom came back this year to play because they had liked their experience so much.

That includes Lahache’s assistant coach Dominic Seguin, from Chateauguay. His son, Noah, played for the U15 fall ball team last year, and joined back in this year for the U18 fall ball team.

The Seguins liked their experience last year so much that when faced with the possibility of not having a team in Chateauguay during the summer, Dominic asked for, and received, a release from the Chateauguay association to have Noah play summer baseball with the U18 Warhawks.

For Noah, like many other fall ball players, baseball is his primary sport.

“Continuing to play baseball in the fall is a great way for him to advance himself and get experience, learning like this is worth its weight in gold for when he plays U18 again next year,” said Dominic.

“This is for the kids that don’t have other sports, so that they can prolong their season and development for next season,” said Lahache.

So far, in his two years being a coach with the Warhawks, Dominic has never experienced anything quite like the strong bond the players have.

“Even if we lose, we have fun. It’s a very fun team, they either spend the summer together, or the kids do things together off the field, they talk to each other outside of games. It’s night and day what he experienced in outside associations,” said Dominic.

Because of that, he bemoaned the fact that teams from Kahnawake are still sometimes met with aggressiveness or downright hostility from opposing teams and parents, ranging from taunting to aggressive behaviour and, in some cases, blatant racism.

“It is deplorable that some people outside the community still have a negative image of Kahnawake sports teams. Noah has been welcomed with open arms and accepted, why can’t others accept people from Kahnawake? Yes, they are competitive, but why are they still dealing with racism and hostility in 2025?” said Dominic.

“My greatest wish is to win the fall ball championship and to have this team be taken seriously by everyone else.”

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