After opening up the spring weekend with some tune-ups against a pair of Premier Baseball League teams, the Okanagan College Coyotes will get a chance to see its closest collegiate rival this weekend.
The Coyotes and Thompson Rivers University will play four games this weekend, a double-header at Kelowna’s Elks Stadium on Friday (5 p.m.) before playing twice on Sunday in Kamloops.
While it’s still the fall exhibition season for the Coyotes, the games against Kamloops hold more weight, due to the rivalry between the two teams, said Coyotes coach Geoff White.
“Absolutely, we always have good games with them, they are good competition,” said White, whose club went 3-1-1 last weekend in games against the Okanagan Athletics and Langley Blaze, two of the top PBL teams in B.C.
The Coyotes fall season will feature 40 exhibition games against a variety of teams. The club features a 42 man roster with 25 players returning from last season’s team that fell in the semi-final of the year-end Canadian Colleges Baseball Conference (CCBC) championship tournament.
“We’re trying to gauge our new players and how guys have progressed,” said White. “We’re definitely trying to evaluate our guys as much as possible in the exhibition season.”
The Coyotes have a veteran squad returning and will rely on players like Bryan Elias, Zach Burlon, Tyler Pentland and Marcus Drewry to lead the way.
Following the 40 game exhibition schedule, the Coyotes will break until February when they will travel to Los Angelas and Las Vegas to play American collegiate teams before the CCBC regular season schedule kicks off in earnest.
