Barring any unforeseen circumstances in the province’s fight to contain the pandemic, kids in Prince George will be playing organized baseball this year,
The Prince George Youth Baseball Association already has more than 300 players in seven age divisions signed up for the 2021 house league season, which will begin as soon as the teams are allowed on the city ball diamonds.
The 2020 season failed to launch. People were first getting used to the terms “lockdowns” and “self-isolation” during the spring when there were so much more unknown about the COVID-19 virus and the threat it posed to society. A year later, it’s still a threat, with record levels of infections happening in B.C. over the past week, but with vaccines becoming available and safety precautions well-established, PGYB is going ahead with plans for the new season.
“They haven’t shut us down yet, so we’re one step better than we were last year - at this time last year we weren’t doing anything,” said PGYBA president Carmen Martin.
Online registration is available through the league website – www.pgyba - and that will continue until the Thursday midnight deadline. Registration fees vary according to age. It will cost $90 for kids five and-under (blastball) and 7U (coach pitch); $150 for 9U (tadpole); $200 for 11U (mosquito); $210 for 13U (peewee); and $225 for 15U (bantam) and 18U (midget) divisions.
PGYBA registration has remained in the 500s annually in the past four or five years leading up to the pandemic. More than half the 300 or so players who paid their fees last year deferred that payment a year rather than ask for that money back, Martin said.
The house league season usually starts in early May and runs until of June. Martin said she’d be happy if game start by mid-May., knowing some fields in the Hart area of the city still have snow on them. All-star/rep teams play until the middle of August in a typical season, but there is still much uncertainty whether those teams will be allowed to play at all in 2021.
Teams have been working out indoors since January at the Northern Sport Centre fieldhouse. None of that indoor activity was going on last spring. Due to field conditions, Martin said the league decided in July to scrap the 2020 season.
“We canceled the season here at PGYBA last year because by the time we were able to do anything the city fields weren’t ready,” said Martin. “We probably could have done something throughout the summer but the fields weren’t ready because nobody had been on them. Nobody wanted to do a work bee, nobody wanted to be around anybody, there was all these rules.”
Prince George was one of the few B.C. cities not to play any games in 2020. In the more densely-populated regions where cities are closer together , rep teams are able to visit other cities and be back home easily that day – not feasible for teams in Prince George whose closest trip to play provincial rivals is nearly six hours away in Kamloops. With travel restrictions in place preventing teams from visiting other regions without first serving mandatory quarantines, there was no way to accommodate Prince George teams in tournaments.
On Monday, the province announced it will extend until the May long weekend current measures which ban in-person dining and ban sports teams from traveling for competitions.
Martin is hoping a surge of registered players will bring the league closer to the 521 players it had in 2019. That year, the PGYBA hosted the BC Minor Baseball 15U bantam double A provincial championship at Nechako Field and the Prince George Jepson Petroleum Knights lived up to the hometown pressure and won the title, among three provincial banners Prince George teams brought home that season. Much of that momentum was lost in 2020, said Martin, and she said it will be difficult regaining the strangleholds PGYBA teams held over their provincial peers.
“We had three provincial wins and that’s the devastating part for the kids is that we came off such a great year,” said Martin, now in her fifth season as PGYBA president. ”For being out of the north it’s going to be hard to grasp our way back up. It’s not that we don’t have the talent but if you don’t get a chance to play.
“The Lower Mainland teams, if they allow intrasquad games or can play against one team they absolutely are going to play. We don’t have that luxury. You can’t travel anywhere for a day and back, that’s a long day. We’re kind of at the mercy of COVID.”
