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This article by Dale Grummert appeared in the Lewiston Tribune on May 31, 2006. Reproduced with the permission of the author.

It comes down to expedience. There are 16 members of the NAIA in each of Missouri, Kansas and Indiana. There are 15 schools in Texas, 24 in California.

And there are two each in Idaho and Washington.

So members such as Lewis-Clark State, hungry for competition, are more than happy to encourage new NAIA programs that are remotely within driving distance.

The Warriors did everything they could to nurture the University of British Columbia baseball program during its infancy in the late 1990s. You might even say they played a small role in its genesis.

Today, the Thunderbirds will try to punish that good deed.

Lewis-Clark State, the standard-bearer in NAIA baseball, faces the Canadian upstarts at 3 p.m. in a loser-out game of the NAIA World Series in Lewiston. The Thunderbirds absorbed their first loss of the tournament Tuesday night, to Cumberland.

The Warriors have beaten UBC four of five times this year, but three of the wins were by one run.

The success of the T-Birds of Vancouver, BC this season is surprising in a number of ways. This is only their ninth year of baseball existence, their seventh in the NAIA, and they've never previously advanced to the World Series. But after their 23-5 dismantling of Lubbock Christian on Monday night, they were the talk of the tournament.

The fact that they're Canadian only adds to the surprise value.

Thunderbirds coach Terry McKaig, sitting behind home plate Tuesday while watching LCSC defeat Embry-Riddle 11-10, was asked where baseball ranks in popularity among Canadian sports. "Near the bottom," he admitted. "Hockey is No. 1, and I wouldn't be able to tell you what even resembles second. It's hockey, hockey, hockey."

Partly for that reason, the University of British Columbia, with its relatively mild weather and its enrollment of 35,000, may be poised to monopolize Canadian baseball recruiting, such as it is - at least for players who aren't enamored of America.

It's the only school in Canada that awards baseball scholarships.

It's the only school that plays baseball under a U.S. governing body. And according to UBC athletic director Bob Philip, it heartily embraces the American idea of combining athletics and higher education.

"It might not be shared across Canada, but certainly at UBC that's been our position," he said.

Throw in 13 seniors, and it's a little easier to understand the Thunderbirds' 49-13 record this season.

How does all this relate to Lewis-Clark State and coach Ed Cheff, with their 13 championship banners from the NAIA World Series? For one thing, the British Columbia program is basically a spinoff of the now-defunct National Baseball Institute of Canada, a Vancouver-based club that drew from several area colleges. For two years in the late 1980s, it was directed by Cheff's longtime assistant, Gary Picone.

For two decades, then, collegiate baseball in the Vancouver area has looked to Lewis-Clark State both for competition and for a standard by which to measure their progress.

McKaig, 35, a Canadian who had played one season for Albertson College in southern Idaho and later for the NBI, has coached the Thunderbirds since their beginnings as a club team. Their improvement may seem sudden to Lewiston fans, but it's been a steady process. "Terry has obviously done a great job taking advantage of the resources available to them," Picone said. "About four years ago, he invested in some young kids and they've stayed with him and grown with the program. They've come a long way."

The Warriors played an indirect role in the process. In the Thunderbirds' early days, McKaig tried to lure recruits to UBC by boasting how often the school played Lewis-Clark State.

"Looking back on it now," the coach said, "that was one of the biggest reasons our program is where it is today - the fact that Ed Cheff agreed to play us back then."

He played them again and again. The Warriors defeated UBC 21 straight times before the T-Birds managed their first win in the series in 2001.

"We were horrible," McKaig said. "They used to 20-run us routinely. Now I sit here and say, "What good did that do them back then? We just didn't belong on a college field."

But then he remembered something Cheff told him during that period. "He felt it was important that Northwest schools look after Northwest schools. I think he sensed that one day UBC might have the potential to develop. And he loves to have rivalries with teams that might one day get up to their level.

"Maybe," he said, smiling through blue sunglasses, "he never envisioned we'd get this close."