It's viewed as spring training for a Prince George baseball league still thawing out from winter, but five local rep teams pulled on the Knights uniform for out-of-town tournaments this past weekend.
All these games came at the annual May long weekend icebreaker festival in Kamloops. Two of the local teams came back with strong results.
The city's bantam tryout squad (ages 14-15) brought back the gold and the top peewee prospects (ages 12-13) came back with the silver. The golden bantams are under the management of Buck Schmidt while the medalist peewees are coached by Bobby Weightman.
Schmidt's bantams eked out a set of tight-scoring affairs, finishing the tournament with an even 16-16 runs for and against ratio. They dropped their first game 5-2 to Central Okanagan, tied Nanaimo 7-7, shut down Kamloops 3-1 in the first playoff matchup, and saved the best for last in a 4-3 grudge match victory over Central Okanagan in the final.
Weightman's crew outscored their opponents 45-17 overall (second best differential of the peewee division), taking round-robin games from West Kelowna and Vernon by 11-1 scores, then taking down Central Okanagan 15-4. In the playoffs they defeated Burnaby 7-5 to earn a berth in the finals but felt short 6-1 to host Kamloops.
A second set of peewee prospects coached by Michael McLachlan competed in the same division and came back with a record of 0-4, falling to Penticton, Kamloops, Burnaby and then Vernon in the playoffs.
The peewee division had 12 teams divided into three pools.
The Prince George Youth Baseball Association was also represented in the mosquito division (ages 10-11) by a prospect team coached by Darren Heggelund. The mosquito Knights finished with a record of 2-2 in their nine-team competition. They earned wins against Ridge Meadows and Kamloops in the 10-team group but fell to White Rock and Ladner.
All these teams are in the process of determining which players will suit up in the Prince George Knights uniform for the end-of-season provincial tournaments. The lineups this early in the season are considered fluid - many of these players are getting in on province-wide baseball for the first time while others are veterans of past Knights teams at various age levels.
The eldest players (16-18) play in the midget division. This year's Knights team, coached by Murray Lukinchuk, is the defending provincial champion at the double-A level but for the Kamloops tournament played in the triple-A division and ended with a 1-4 record. The Knights dropped games to Vernon, Victoria and North Fraser (each by only a single run) then beat the North Shore Padres 9-4. With only one midget-aged team in Prince George, the Knights train by playing in the Northland Dodge Prince George Senior Men's Baseball League.
The PGYBA's hope is to field two teams each in the bantam, peewee and mosquito provincial championships.
