This summer Baseball Alberta’s Junior ‘AAA’ League will include a Barrhead stop.
The team will play under the moniker of the Orioles and will feature players from both Barrhead and Slave Lake.
Jim Worbec, who will be a coach and serve as team manager, said last year a group attempted to form a team, but unfortunately, they did not have enough players to make it viable.
“Which is really too bad. After a person gets too old to play in midget there really wasn’t anywhere locally for them to play,” he said.
In recent years the highest level of baseball a youth could play in Barrhead was midget, whose players are between 16 and 18 years old.
After that players either had to look outside the community for a junior (19 to 21) team to play on or make the jump to seniors men.
Unfortunately, Worbec said that meant a lot of players’ baseball careers were cut short because they were not able to find a junior team to play on or decided against trying out for the senior men’s squad.
“[The NCABL Orioles] really wasn’t a good fit for a lot of the players, because it really is a men’s league,” he said.
Although NCABL teams comprise players from teenagers to middle age, the median age is 26.
However, when Barrhead’s NCABL team ceased operation the only option for players who wanted to continue was to look for a junior team.
Which is how Barrhead’s junior team became a reality. After Worbec’s son Lee became too old to play midget baseball, he played for the senior Orioles. Something, he actually started to do when he was still playing midget, but when the team folded he joined the Slave Lake Heat, a junior ‘AAA’ team.
“Lee [over the off-season] talked to a number of the boys who said they would be interested in playing for a Barrhead based team,” Worbec said.
About 10 players from the Orioles and six from Slave Lake will make up the squad.
Worbec said the Barrhead team should be very competitive. Last year, the Heat finished in second place in the seven-team league, sporting a 14 - 8 record, before taking gold at the provincial championship tournament.
The Junior ‘AAA’ schedule has not been released, but the season is expected to begin in mid-May.
