It'll be time to play ball soon for young minor baseball players in the city.
The Estevan Minor Baseball Association has gone to the Rally Cap system of younger age players, putting together kids from ages 4 to 6 in the t-ball junior Rally Cap division and kids 7-9 in the pitch machine senior Rally Cap division.
“It's a Baseball Canada program, so we ended up amalgamating three of our younger age divisions into two,” said Estevan minor baseball president Ryan Siever. “That I think has impacted the number a little bit. We know that there will be a little bit of growing pains and hiccups over the year but soon things will run very smoothly there.”
The association is attempting to make things a little bit more streamlined and in concert with the Baseball Canada program. Many of the coaches in the younger age divisions might have little experience coaching.
“The program will give them a lot of good practice schedules so they're not always trying to figure out things to do,” he said.
The numbers were about the same as last year, even though fees have slightly increased. The organization was once again at spring city wide registration recently along with other sports and groups.
“We had 225 roughly that night and we typically get... late registrations and we'll probably end up around 250,” said Siever. “We were roughly there last season ... That puts us in pretty much the same position.”
There should be four mosquito division teams and an extra pee wee team, he said.
The bantam players might be in the Moose Mountain league – more of a house league than last year's travel team. Siever said they're trying to pin down a coach for that team.
“We may end up having kids who might try out for some of the travel teams in surrounding areas,” he said.
There will be enough a midget house team as well as the Blaine Kovach-coached Southeas Performance Pump AAA Twins, which combines forces with other midget players in this part of the province but playing out of Estevan. There may only be one Estevan player on this year's team but Carlyle, Weyburn and Alameda have had players on this team in the past.
“Basically anyone in the southeast corner is welcome to come in and try out,” said Siever.
The association is in good shape financially and has passed some of that on to the city to help out with grass infields and better drainage at Cactus Park.
“Those were huge cost undertakings and we did that in partnership with the city,” he said.
After the 2017 midget AAA provincials were held at Lynn Prime Park, there are no current bids in for any provincial championships for the mosquito, pee wee and bantam age divisions.
“We may be a possibility in the pee wee age division,” Siever said. “Weyburn hosted the pee wee AA provincials, which was nice to be close. We may possibly put in a bid to host, basically if no one else wants to do it ad we can get enough volunteers to get it set up.”
