The first pitch of the college baseball season didn’t go exactly the way the VIBI Mariners planned, but at least they came out on the winning end.
Nanaimo’s Vancouver Island Baseball Institute won its first two games of the Canadian College Baseball Conference season on Saturday in Kelowna, defeating the Prairie Baseball Academy Dawgs 6-2 and then beating the University of Calgary Dinos 4-1.
VIBI was originally supposed to play its home openers on Saturday at Serauxmen Stadium against the Victoria Mavericks, but the Mavs folded their team at the 11th hour.
So the M’s found themselves on the road, where they came out ready to play.
“We played our style of baseball,” said Jordan Blundell, VIBI manager. “It was fun.”
The first game was close all the way through, with the Mariners eventually coming through with run support in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings. Blake Robson had two doubles and two runs batted in and Tim Scarr also drove in two runs. Aaron Tyacke hit a triple. Taylor MacDonell earned the win, giving up just one earned run over six innings of work.
The second game saw Jeremy Harasymchuk lead the charge at the plate, going 3-for-4 with two doubles and two RBI. Starting pitcher Reiley Grose got the win, giving up three hits over five innings, and Jon Przybyl worked two no-hit innings for the save.
“Our team was led by our pitching staff,” Blundell said. “Both guys that started the games had a good tempo going, worked quick, threw strikes and gave us a chance to kind of get into the flow of the game.”
BASE LINES … The VIBI Mariners travel to Kamloops this Saturday (April 2) and Sunday to take on the Thompson Rivers University WolfPack. The team’s home opener will be April 9 when the Calgary Dinos visit Serauxmen Stadium … League managers hammered out the new CCBC schedule last Thursday during a conference call. “It actually went pretty smooth that we were actually able to do something in two hours to provide the same amount of games for our kids,” Blundell said. But subtracting a Victoria team from the league is not good from a travel perspective, and VIBI also loses some home dates. The Mavericks had posted a competition bond that will help alleviate some of those travel costs, but the CCBC hasn’t yet determined how that money will be shared. “We’re hit the hardest with this, so hopefully we are able to get most of that money,” Blundell said.
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