The UFV Cascades baseball team will be considered underdogs as they chase a Canadian College Baseball Conference championship in Kamloops this weekend.
UFV qualified as the fourth out of six teams at the playoff event, and the club finished with a record of 11 wins and 15 losses.
The Cascades will compete against the Prairie Baseball Academy Dawgs (first, 21-8), the Okanagan College Coyotes (second, 20-8), the host Thompson Rivers University Wolf Pack (third, 15-16), the Vancouver Island University Mariners (fifth, 10-18) and the University of Calgary Dinos (sixth, 8-20).
UFV opened the tournament yesterday (Thursday) against Okanagan at 10 a.m. and then TRU at 1 p.m., but results were not available at press time.
The Cascades continue with games against Calgary and the Dawgs on Friday, and then the Mariners on Saturday to close out the round robin. Semifinal and final games occur on Sunday.
UFV will rely offensively on first baseman Riley Jepson, who led the CCBC with a .489 batting average and was third in the league with 25 runs batted in. Jepson may potentially be picked in June’s 2018 Major League Baseball draft.
Read next Wednesday’s print edition of the Abbotsford News for details on how the team fared.