Prince Albert is set to be a hive of baseball activity over the weekend.
The city is set to host the Western Canadian AA Baseball championships over the weekend at the U13, U15 and U18 age levels.
Nathan Noble is the president of the Prince Albert Minor Baseball Association (PAMBA). In an interview with the Daily Herald, Noble says the board was ready to submit a bid when the opportunity arose last year.
“When the prospect came up for us to put a bid in, we were all very excited. We’ve had a couple of teams attend Westerns in the past and we thought this would be a great opportunity to showcase our city, our diamonds, and get our teams involved in playing in the tournament as well.”
In recent years, there have been several improvements done at the Kinsmen Baseball Complex. New scoreboards have been installed at all three diamonds, which are all slated to see games this weekend.
Prince Albert has also become a regular site for provincial championships at all age levels because of the improvements made. Noble says that PAMBA is very happy with the state of the fields heading into the weekend.
“We’ve had the opportunity to host provincials every year here in the city for the last number of years and the city has done a lot of work into the diamonds. Our board and membership has put a lot of work into the diamonds, and we’re really happy and pleased with where they’re at. We’ve got some really good equipment and some really good diamonds right now, so we’re proud and happy to showcase those this weekend.”
While PA has multiple AA teams at the 13U and 18U levels, there will only be one team able to compete. The 13U Royals will be coached by Tom Hurd while the 18U Prince Albert team will be the Royals coached by Troy Semenchuk.
While it won’t be the first time a Prince Albert team has played in a Westerns, it will be the first time that PA has played host by choice. In 2023, the U13 AA Royals attended Westerns in Kelowna, but the tournament was cancelled due to wildfires in the area.
The Royals decided to host a modified version of the Westerns a couple of weeks later in Prince Albert, but not every team that qualified attended. Prince Albert went onto to win that tournament.
With PA playing host in 2026 for multiple age levels, Noble says it should do a lot of positive work for the grassroots of the sport in the city.
“I think that the kids and the teams that are playing in it are going to become just that little bit more invested with the excitement around it and the enjoyment of competing in a tournament of this level, and I think they’ll come back with new motivation next year. It’ll also bring out some community members and some of the PAMBA members that aren’t playing to come out and see some of this. I think it’ll do a lot of good between both the teams that are playing and the, and the kids and players that are watching.”
State of baseball in Prince Albert
In recent years, baseball has been on the up tick in Prince Albert. Thanks to the upgraded facilities at the Kinsmen Baseball Complex and the run to Game 7 of the World Series by the Toronto Blue Jays last season, PAMBA registrations have seen an increase at all levels.
Noble says the growth was so rapid that PAMBA actually had to turn away some last minute minute registrants this year.
“The number of AA teams that we ran this year is our highest number ever and we anticipate it continuing almost to a point where it’s a problem with our diamond space. We’ve maxed out our younger age groups, our senior rallies, our 11U, as far as the leagues that we can run. We’ve got our six teams in each of those from Prince Albert, plus some traveling teams. Our leagues are up to 10 teams right now, and we’re basically at our limit based on our facilities. We’ve actually had to turn some kids away from baseball at registration time because our registrations have filled up. Baseball is definitely strong. I think the Blue Jays helped that. We’re happy with where baseball is at and we look forward to tackling some of these problems here in the future.”
While the sport of baseball is growing, there is some hurdles that PAMBA may have to clear in the near future.
At present, all of the Royals teams compete at the AA level. While there has been success for PA in AA, there have been discussions spanning years of PAMBA offering AAA level teams.
Noble says he expects PA to make the jump to AAA at some point, but he isn’t exactly sure when.
“We definitely have been discussing the concept of AAA baseball at our board level and that’s something that I believe will probably come and be put to a vote here after the AGM this year. Our teams are very competitive at the AA level, and there’s an appetite from some of our players to look into AAA. I think that’s definitely something on the horizon.”
At present, PAMBA only has two diamonds capable of hosting games at the 15U and 18U. Unlike other sports that use a standard field size for all age levels, baseball utilizes different diamond sizes for different age levels.
11U and 13U are played on diamonds with a mound 46 feet away from home plate and 60 feet between bases. 15U is played with a mound at 54 feet and 80 foot basepaths.
Finally, 18U is played on a standard diamond with a mound 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate and 90 foot basepaths. This is also the same size diamond used in Major League Baseball.
At present, Andy Zwack Field is the only 18U sized diamond in the city while Lypchuk Field at the Kinsmen Baseball Complex is the only 15U sized diamond.
Noble says PAMBA will need to look at another diamond in the near future.
“With our numbers increasing, we’re going to need another facility at the 15/18U level. We’ve got two diamonds at the 13U level, three diamonds at the 11U/Senior Rally level. Those are fairly healthy, but it’s that 15U/18U where if our numbers hold steady, the one diamond at each is pretty tight, because we could be running up to three teams between AA and some house league stuff. Facilities will be our next topic of discussion and project that we’ll have to put some time into.”
editorial@paherald.sk.ca
