UBC Thunderbird Baseball Fan Page

The article says that the NCAA is likely to open the door to Canadian schools in January, but only for Division II. The article doesn't mention baseball at all.

Division II schools are allowed to compete in one men's Division I sport, and that sport cannot be football or basketball. According to the Province article, the likely candidates for Division I competition are men's ice hockey and men's volleyball.

UBC's baseball team belongs in Division I, but competing in Division II would still be an improvement over the NAIA status quo. The big factor in this is travel. The baseball team would, in all likelihood, be competing in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC). The baseball-playing members of this conference are currently Central Washington, Saint Martin's, Northwest Nazarene, Western Oregon, and Montana State-Billings. Central Washington (in Ellensburg) and Saint Martin's (in Lacey, near Olympia) are closer than any of UBC's current opponents. Northwest Nazarene is about the same distance as The College of Idaho (formerly known as Albertson), and Western Oregon is about the same distance as Corban. (Montana State-Billings is 1,520 km. away; they'll be flying to those games.)

The caliber of competition needs to be a topic of discussion, however. We won't learn until later on whether UBC can keep Lewis-Clark State, College of Idaho, and Concordia-Portland on the schedule. The Thunderbirds have played Central Washington, Saint Martin's, and Northwest Nazarene in recent years, and have pretty much had their way with them. (The Thunderbirds are undefeated against Northwest Nazarene.) The Thunderbirds are scheduled to play Western Oregon (usually a good team) and Montana State-Billings (a three-year-old program) at a tournament in Lewiston in February, and it will be interesting to see how these teams match up.

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