A young TRU WolfPack baseball squad plays in the CCBC Championships this weekend in Kelowna (Image Credit: CFJC Today)
TRU BASEBALL

WolfPack baseball to play in first meaningful games in two years — and it’s a championship

Oct 7, 2021 | 4:27 PM

KAMLOOPS — The WolfPack haven’t played a real season — in fact, they haven’t played a season since 2019 — and this fall only a handful of exhibition games. However, it has a chance to win a championship.

The ‘Pack are competing in the CCBC Championships this weekend in Kelowna, looking for the program’s fourth title.

“I think it’s great, personally,” said fifth-year outfield Curtis Wall. “It’s what we’ve wanted to do this whole time, so getting right back into it is fine with me, especially with all the young guys. They can figure out everything they need to know right away.”

TRU manager Ray Chadwick added, “We’ve got three guys that have played in a CCBC game, where everybody else has never played. We’re young, but we got some talent and we’ve got some guys that have shown they’re going to compete over the last month, so it’ll be fun.”

It’s an eight-team championship tournament. The WolfPack are in Pool B with Calgary, Fraser Valley and Victoria. The other pool features the defending champions from 2019, Okanagan College, as well as the 10-time Canadian college baseball champion Prairie Baseball Academy.

“Okanagan and UFV and PBA, they’ve all got guys that would’ve been playing two years ago. All of them have guys that would be finished baseball if not for COVID,” said Chadwick. “So they’re the veteran, older teams that are picked to win probably.”

TRU, like many of the other teams, come into the tournament without much prep time. After the cancelled 2020 season, the WolfPack got in almost 20 exhibition games in the last month, going 11-8 mainly against the teams they’ll be playing this weekend.

“We swept Victoria, we split 2-2 with VIU and we split 2-2 with Fraser Valley, and we lost two to [Okanagan College]. We lost bad 11-3 and then we lost 4-0.”

TRU starts the tournament on Friday morning at 11:30 against the Fraser Valley Cascades.