KAMLOOPS — WolfPack Baseball is off to a hot start in the Canadian College Baseball Conference season.
Thursday night they’re playing the Okanagan Coyotes in a doubleheader at Norbrock.
Through the first eight games the WolfPack have been doing a combination of all of the right things to stay undefeated.
The TRU WolfPack baseball team locked in their eighth straight win to start the season last weekend.
That leaves them undefeated at 8-and-0 to begin the 2019 CCBC campaign.
“We’ve been swinging it pretty well, we’ve thrown it pretty well from the mound, we’ve pitched well and we’ve played pretty good defence.” says Ray Chadwick, who is in his 17th season as the WolfPack head coach. “When we didn’t swing well, we’ve executed and manufactured runs, so putting all those things together early and hopefully we can keep things going on.”
Liam Rihela is the WolfPack’s second year starting shortstop. He says to start the year, a whole lot of things have been going right for TRU.
“We’re just playing hard baseball.” says Rihela. “Going out there, playing the game well, executing, keeping it simple — playing it loose for the most part.”
The WolfPack have won games in many different fashions this year. Opening weekend, they scored 48 runs in four games, including a 24-3 drubbing of PBA in the third game that weekend.
But against the Calgary Dinos last Sunday, they needed to play some small ball to eke out a win.
“With the wooden bat you have to.” says coach Chadwick. “If you want to be good, if you want to win, you have to execute because you’re not going to get three or four hits in a row, you’re not going to get a bunch of home runs. So you have to do those little things like execute.”
The WolfPack face their biggest test of the season Thursday as they take on the Okanagan College Coyotes in a pair of double headers — one at Norbrock, and the other in Kelowna.
Ahead of those contests the team is confident they have the talent and the ability to finish the season as CCBC champions.
“I think that’s always the goal.” says Liam Rihela. “At the start of the season it seems like it’s realistic for us now. If we can keep doing this, we should have a good chance. Just keep playing baseball like we know we can, and we should have a good shot at it.”
“When the guys get here in September and they make this team,” says Chadwick, “That’s our goal to be in that championship game in May and to win it. If we keep doing what we’ve been doing the first two weeks we should be in that championship game, and our goal is to win it.”
