Minor baseball in Prince George is alive and well.
While teams are struggling to find sponsorship and the league is short a few volunteers, largely due to the draw of the 2015 Canada Winter Games which has already put a dent on corporate dollars and people resources, there's no shortage of kids wanting to play baseball.
Overall, registration in the Prince George Youth Baseball Association is down slightly from last year's 370 total to 355, but league president Brenda Astorino says that's no cause for concern.
The peewee (11- and-12-year-old) division grew from 53 to 70, enough for five house league teams and there are big enough numbers in the mosquito division (nine- and-10-year-olds) to form seven teams. The bantam division (13-14-year-olds) has three teams. The league also has six teams in tadpole (seven-eight-year-old) division and a three-team blastball (four-to-six-year-old) division.
The league plays its games on seven city ball diamonds located at Volunteer Park, Joe Martin Field, Rotary Park and Gyro Park.
"Baseball is still an affordable active sport - we haven't raised the registration fees for two years in the youngest age groups because we really want to entice the younger ones to come out," said Astorino. "People should come and watch. A lot of people watched the [bantam] provincials last year and there's no reason they can't do that for regular games."
League fees ranged from $60 (blastball) and $110 (tadpole) to $140 (mosquito and peewee) and $170 (bantam and midget). House league games started earlier this week and will continue through the end of June.
The Lomak under-16 bantam Knights will form the bulk of the Zone 8 Cariboo Northeast team that will compete at the B.C. Summer Games in Nanaimo, July 17-20. Final tryouts for that team will be held May 25 at Rotary Park.
The Total Tops midget Knights are the only midget-aged (15-17) team in the city and play a regular schedule in the Prince George Senior Baseball League, which starts next week.
The Prince George Grays senior league all-star squad worked last season putting on skills clinics for the bantam- and midget-aged players and Astorino said league president Jay Cook has extended that offer once again to youth baseball, with plans to include peewees as well.
"Who knows, maybe they'll be up there playing in the senior league and Jay wants to keep them interested," said Astorino.
