Local minor baseball officials are hoping to hit a home run with their application to bring a College Prep League (CPL) team to Penticton.
The seven-team league, which operates under the auspices of B.C. Baseball, was formed three years ago by Grant Rimer to give under-18 players a competitive and affordable option to the Premier Baseball League (PBL).
Currently, there is a West Kelowna squad (D-Backs) in the CPL that has seven Penticton players on the roster. The hope is to move that team here for next season.
The league’s only other Interior team is in Kamloops. The PBL has a team in Kelowna, the Okanagan Athletics.
“This has kind of been a learning experience going on the highway and playing in West Kelowna, but now that we’ve done it we understand what it takes to compete at that level and understand what it takes to run that program. Now it’s time to bring it back here,” said Penticton’s Aqil Samuel, one of the D-Backs coaches. “So if you look at our team, we developed these kids all the way up from mosquito. Let’s bring them back.”
The CPL is a tier above the AAA midget level and is designed specifically to help local players who have a dream of going on to play at the college level in Canada and the U.S. and possibly professional baseball.
Several years ago, Penticton had a AAA midget team with a full-time coach which drew players from as far away as Washington State.
“Now, we want to do that again,” said Iain MacIntyre, South Okanagan Minor Baseball Association president and coach of the Penticton Tigers AA bantam squad, one of the top teams in their league. “What we’re finding now is that baseball is certainly on the rise again and the talent is there so we want to provide something where they can play local and still be able to play at that high level.
“In the last three years, we’ve got five medals at the provincials and the peewee group is probably the strongest we’ve seen in years. So, as opposed to having them go to Kelowna, we’d love to have them stay here.”
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MacIntyre added the PBL is a business which he doesn’t feel always works in the players’ best interest.
“A lot of these kids are going up there and spending seven grand as opposed to $1,200. Because it’s a business model, they pay seven grand and sit on the bench. That’s not what baseball is about,” said MacIntyre.
“It’s very important to realize baseball is becoming a rich man’s sport. What I mean by a rich man’s sport is we’re losing a lot of athletes because to play at the highest levels they’re getting out-priced,” added Rimer, talking about why he started the league in the first place. “That’s ludicrous. We wanted to give kids options, options of staying the path of their community baseball, at a lower cost and to keep more kids in the sport.
“I’m a firm believer baseball is about memories.”
Samuel, who has 23 years of coaching experience under his belt, along with another veteran coach, Tom Katelnikoff, would take the reins of the new team with help from MacIntyre and Rene Spence, another of the bantam coaches.
“Running it out of here just makes sense,” said Samuel.
Once completed, the application will go to Rimer and the CPL board for consideration.
