Forget about camping or going to the beach. Best friends Lexie Brenneis and Paige Harbord hung out together this summer on Team B.C. winning a national championship.

The teens culminated a memorable month journey on Sunday night at Brighouse Park as B.C. captured the Canadian Bantam Girls Baseball Championships with a 5-4 win over Ontario. The result completed an unbeaten run for B.C. and marked the second time in three years it has finished on top of the podium.

At 14, Brenneis and Harbord were the youngest girls on the team and still have two more years of eligibility at this level. They are already thinking about repeating in 2011 when the tournament is held in Nova Scotia.

"We have been best friends for a long time and to be on this team has been an amazing experience," smiled Brenneis. "When we first started practice as a team, we didn't know anybody's name and we were really kind of nervous.

Then we end up right here (winning a championship). All these girls are just amazing."

Brenneis and Harbord have grown up playing among boys in the Ladner Minor Baseball Association. This season, they were teammates in the LMBA's Bantam House League.

Harbord won silver two years ago as a member of Team B.C. at the Canadian Pee Wee Girls Championships. Brenneis was playing for the Ladner all-star program at the time.

They both attended Team B.C. tryouts last month and earned spots on the 14-player roster, that features six players from Surrey. Nothing against their Ladner teammates, but the intensity and caliber of play at the Nationals was unmatched.

"Everyone was just way more focused and together as a team," said Harbord. "It was definitely a better experience than playing boys house ball."

Harbord also played rep fastpitch and will continue to do both in the future. Brenneis has played nothing but baseball.

"I'm thinking about switching but I haven't made up my mind," she said. "I am very set on baseball. It's basically my entire life."

Based on her role with Team B.C., there will be plenty of more highlights too.

Despite her age and lack of experience at the national level, Brenneis proved to be one of B.C.'s workhorses.

She pitched in a 7-2 semi-final win over Quebec then got the start against Ontario, working nearly three innings before departing when her pitched count for the day (95) had reached the maximum.

She also saw regular duty in right field and hit the ball hard in each of her four plate appearances. She singled in the seventh that led to a pair of valuable insurance runs.

After cruising through round-robin play with little resistance, B.C. had its hands full in the medal round. It pulled away from bronze medalist Quebec in the late going to earn the semi-final win and trailed Ontario 1-0 after three innings before erupting for five unanswered runs.

Ontario still made things interesting by scoring three times in the bottom of the seventh off player-of-the-game and winning pitcher Faith Lau.

The contest featured a number of outstanding defensive plays -- much to the delight of a large crowd at Brighouse.

B.C. head coach Al Forman says the bar for girls baseball in Canada just keeps getting higher.

"Girls can play baseball," said Forman, who has been involved with the girls provincial team program since its inception.

"We saw some plays tonight that would do boys proud."

EXTRA INNINGS ...

Coaches and players had rained praise on Richmond City Baseball for its effort hosting the Nationals. Even more impressive was the number of volunteers giving up so much of their time in an event that did not feature one local player.