By Earl Seitz

KIBT flourishes on loyalty and good baseball

Jul 5, 2018 | 4:06 PM

KAMLOOPS — The Kamloops International Baseball Tournament is underway at Norbrock.

Started in 1973, this is its 45th year.

One of the reasons for the its long term success has been loyalty — an organizing committee that has stuck with it through thick and thin, teams that keep coming back year after year, and fans that keep returning year after year.

Harold Pyatte is the coach of the Everett Merchants.

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Pyatte has been involved with elite summer collegiate baseball for nearly 50 years, and has brought teams to the International since the 1970’s.

The Seattle Studs have been a mainstay at KIBT for decades — one of the most successful summer baseball college programs in North America — and certainly successful at KIBT.

The Studs have won the tournament the last seven years in a row and ten of the last eleven.

Is there any team at this years tournament that has a chance to knock the Studs off their grip on the KIBT championship.

“Well, to be honest with you, it’s going to take a lot,” says KIBT president Wayne Harper. “They’re doing very well in league play. (8-1 in the Pacific International Baseball League)  But you never know — come tournament time other teams can step up and say ‘hey, we gotta take these guys on’.  You see a lot of the best baseball plays made here, as opposed to league play,” says Harper, “So somebody could take them.”

Two of those somebodies are the teams that played in the first game of the 2018 tournament today — the Everett Merchants and Northwest Honkers.

Everett won 3-0.

The Merchants and the Studs aren’t scheduled to meet unless it’s in the playoffs — where the first place team after a modified round robin gets a bye to the final, with the second and third place teams playing in a semi final.