The Westwood Sports Pub Gladiators finished dead last in 2014 in the Prince George Senior Baseball League.
They won six of 20 games last season and finished fifth, which meant they had to play the Queensway Auto World Red Sox in the opening playoff round.
The Gladiators did pull off a bit of a surprise when they knocked off the first-place Red Sox in the opening game of a best-of-three playoff series. That turned out to be the only loss of the playoffs for Queensway, which won its next six games to win its second-straight PGSBL championship.
All that's forgotten now that the grass has risen on a new season.
The reward for the Gladiators' lowly finish is they get to pick first in today's entry draft, and there's at least one stud available.
Second baseman/pitcher Jared Young, who just finished off a stellar rookie season in the NCAA as an All-Conference infielder for the Minot State Beavers, is looking for a team to play for this summer and there's a good chance the Gladiators will pick him today as their first-overall choice.
Catcher Cole Waldie is back from the Vancouver Island Baseball Institute and could also be in the mix as the first-overall pick. Tyrus Jocko and Tre Potskin have graduated from the Lomak Contracting Knights midget program; Brandon Graham is coming back from the Okanagan College Coyotes college program; and Dylan Johnson is returning from Mayville State in North Dakota. They will be among the 11 players available in today's player draft.
Each PGSBL team will play a 20-game schedule, which opens Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at Citizen Field with the Inland Control Services Tigers taking on the Knights.
Regular season games will be played on Tuesday on Friday nights except on long weekends, when their are no Friday games scheduled.
The league wraps up on the August long weekend and playoffs will begin the following week
"We're starting a week earlier this year because of the weather, which will be nice because we have the World Baseball Challenge (Aug. 9-23) this year," said PGSBL president Jay Cook.
The other PGSBL team is the K&B Contracting Orioles.
The Knights will play in the league until their midget provincial championship in August but won't take part in the PGSBL playoffs.
The PGSBL will soon decide on a charity that will receive funds raised in the annual PGSBL all-star game in mid-July.
The league has built a double-tunnel batting cage that allows two hitters to stand in the box and take practice swings simultaneously.
"It should bring up the quality of the league because guys will get to hit every night," said Cook.
"If you do want to take some batting practice you just need one other guy, you don't need a whole team."
The grass at Citizen Field is in fantastic shape, according to Cook, in sharp contrast to the opening month last year, when it was still recovering from a cold winter.
After playing only road games the past few seasons, the Prince George Grays senior all-star team will host a four-game series against the Kamloops Sun Devils June 20-21. The Grays will be in Kelowna for another four-game set against the Kelowna Jays, June 26-28, then return to Citizen Field for another series against the Jays, July 4-5.
Kamloops will host the senior provincial championship, July 29-Aug. 3. Cook said teams are still looking for players to flesh out rosters. For more information call Cook at 250-613-2436 or email him at [email protected].
