Coming from Belgium, a soccer loving country, baseball was never Veronique Dewilde’s first choice for her son to play.
“Baseball, the most boring game after golf?” Dewilde said. “Let’s keep it the old fashion way to soccer.”
But a nine-year-old Kyran Weemaels found baseball, the American past time, while living in Ohio.
“Well, I mean everyone played. My friends at the time played so it was like I may as well play baseball too,” Weemaels said.
And as it turned out, he was pretty good at it.
“One of the Mom’s came up and said ‘I’ve been watching your son, he has a very good arm, he should be a pitcher,” Dewilde said. “I’m like a pitcher? I only knew a pitcher of beer, I’m like what the heck is she talking about.”
Well Dewilde quickly caught on after her son took the mound for the first time for his losing little league team.
“Kyran started throwing the ball into the glove and guess what? We won the game and he’s been a starting pitcher ever since,” she said.
And Weemael’s love for the sport has blossomed since then. Now ten years later, baseball has opened many doors for the 19-year-old pitcher, including offering him a scholarship to Brescia University in Owensboro, KY, where he’s entering his sophomore season, while studying chemical engineering.
And most recently, a five months playing term with the Belgium national team where he pitched at the 2016 European Championship in the Netherlands.
“When I got out to the mound, especially against the Netherlands, that’s where it kind of sunk in, like, wow, I’m kind of in a professional league right now,” Weemaels said.
Weemaels appeared in three games, while Belgium finished the Championship with a record of 3-5.
Weemaels and his family moved to Airdrie just over six years ago. The big throwing right-hander fined tuned his craft through local minor baseball in the Calgary area.
“I think it kind of shaped me into the man I am today, working with the different coaches,” he said. “Especially in the (Calgary) Dinos, I think that’s where it kind of made me realize I could go pretty far in baseball.”
“When you’re passionate about something and it doesn’t matter what it is, you need to make your dream out of it, you need to focus on it,” Dewilde said. “Whatever drives you that’s what’s going to bring you to the next level.”
And Weemaels hopes that next level, someday, can be Major League Baseball.
Just one Belgium-born player has made it to the big leagues, Brian Lesher, who played from 1996-2002 with Oakland, Seattle and Toronto.
Weemaels has already visualized that moment.
“I have dreams, like when I’m in an MLB stadium kind of just walk up to the mound, stand there and kind of just look around, like wow I made it kind of thing,” Weemaels said.
It’s a recurring dream he’d love to live out in reality.
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