Blame it on the Blue Jays.
Their success in Major League Baseball as a playoff team the past two seasons has had a ripple effect. It's making kids want to play ball in the Prince George Youth Baseball Association.
The league is bursting at the seams with wait lists in some age divisions and a full lineup of rep teams playing for B.C. Minor Baseball provincial championships this season. There are now 569 players registered and that's up close to 60 per cent compared to three years ago.
"Baseball numbers are up by 65 kids this year, we've easily doubled our numbers, if not more, in the last three years," said PGYBA president Carmen Martin.
"The Blue Jays have definitely helped, they've done so well and it's one of Canada's sports. It's affordable and their friends are playing and they have a good time. We run a really good league and we have great coaches."
Last year's B.C. Baseball championship run of the Lomak midget Knights all the way to the provincial double-A title in a tournament played at Citizen Field might have also served as an inspiration for kids to join.
Interest in playing continued to surge in the winter months when the league used some of its saved funds to offer free sessions of indoor training for players at the Northern Sport Centre.
The once-per-week sessions ran from January to April and kids were able to hit, field and practice baserunning indoors.
"We now offer indoor baseball for some kids who play in our all-star division but also for our developmental players," said Martin. "All kids in all age groups had the chance to come out and try it and there was no cost and I would say that increased our numbers in some divisions."
The PGYBA house league now has eight teams and 64 players in blastball (5-and-under); 14 teams and 108 players in the coach pitch (five and six-year-old) division; eight teams and 122 players in tadpole (nine-and-under); nine teams and 108 players in the mosquito 11-and-under ranks; 94 kids and eight teams in peewee (13-and-under); 55 players on five teams in bantam (15-and-under); and 15 midget-age players who all play for the Lomak Knights rep team.
"We had to wait-list a lot of kids this year because we didn't have the field space to accommodate all of them, so we had to actually cap it off," said PGYBA player agent Amanda Langevin. "I've been on the board three years and the numbers have increased 25 per cent each year."
In the wake of declining enrollment a few years ago, the league lost two of its fields when the city demolished the infrastructure at two fields at the former Heather Park facility in the Hart Highlands area adjacent to the four diamonds at Volunteer Park.
"We gave up Heather Park before I was on the board because the numbers were too low and we didn't use it," said Langevin.
"I think PGYBA would like to have more central fields instead of having them all up in the Hart. We really would have liked to put some money to upgrade Carrie Jane Gray Field this year but we weren't allowed to do that. We're basically just using the fields we've been given, we haven't been given any new fields to accommodate all the players."
City employees have told the PGYSBA that Carrie Jane Gray Field, which sits on land next to Citizen Field and the Supertrak BMX track, has been set aside as the future site of a new downtown fire hall, which will go to a referendum this fall to decide whether taxpayers are willing to fund that project as well as pay for a revamped Four Seasons Pool.
Langevin is a granddaughter of former city alderman Carrie Jane Gray, the first female mayor in Prince George, who served in that position from 1958-59.
"The fact they want to put a fire hall right in the middle of that park didn't go over so good," she said.
The lack of fields limits the league's ability to go after bids to host provincial tournaments, like last year's highly-successful B.C. midget championship, played on adult facilities at Rotary Field and Citizen Field.
The city now has just three peewee-sized fields and the PGYSA is using five school fields and one of the Prince Minor Girls Softball Association fields at Carrie Jane Gray Park to take up the slack.
"If we're gong to increase again next year and offer more registration to more players we're going to have increase our space, otherwise we won't be able to grow anymore," said Martin. "For two divisions we have one baseball field and if the kids in the lower divisions keep registering year after year, we're going to have to have a midget house league for them at some point and then we'll definitely not have room."
The house league season runs until the end of June, with the rep teams playing through July and part of August. More information about the league is available at www.pgyba.com.
