The deadline has come and gone and while it wasn't unanimous, the organizing committee of the World Baseball Challenge has decided to go ahead with this year's tournament.
The corporate community responded to an urgent plea WBC organizers made last week to save the August tournament from imminent cancellation due to a budget shortfall.
While the committee is still as much as $20,000 short of its funding target to host the nine-day international tournament, the committee announced Wednesday it will proceed as scheduled.
"Following a late push for corporate support, we are excited to be hosting this event for the third time," said Shawn Rice, WBC co-chair and marketing director.
"This is the biggest sporting event in Prince George this year, people recognize that, and we've had tremendous backing from (Mayor) Shari Green and (MLA) Shirley Bond at every step, along with many others."
Over the past week, the WBC committee secured donations of $20,000 from Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines and $10,000 from Rio Tinto Alcan. The committee announced last week it needed $65,000 in additional funding to proceed and local companies including Wood Wheaton, Treasure Cove Casino, Westcana Electric, Kelly O'Bryan's, Regional Securities, Finning, 250News, Powerpro Industries, Norweld and AAA Photography responded with their chequebooks or in-kind donations.
The tournament already had numerous sponsors in place, including The Prince George Citizen.
"We never lost faith in the community and our faith has been confirmed," said tournament co-chair Jim Swanson.
"The vote was not unanimous for us to go ahead, we didn't get to the $65,000 we needed. But we still have irons in the fire that we believe are going to come through and now is the push to encourage people to buy tickets and to encourage other sponsors to continue to come forward and they have."
The tournament starts Tuesday, Aug. 13, with Canada playing the U.S. at Citizen Field. The WBC lineup also includes Cuba, the Bahamas, Chinese-Taipei, and Japan.
