NEW PBL TEAM CONFIRMED IN LOW KEY OFFSEASON

The 2016/2017 off season has been extremely quiet and low key across the Powerline Baseball League. After a PBL Championship series that included a third and final game spanning two days, all is quiet on the western front of the PBL website and Twitter feeds across the league. 

Seemingly long gone are the days of a story being posted on the PBL website followed within minutes by number of comments debating the validity of the story or adding rumors to the content. Perhaps in 2017 there is a concern by the league over being label as 'fake news' from the general public, as much journalism is now considered. 

There are two things that we know following an impromptu league meeting in December. The league will expand to a total of nine teams, assuming all 2016 teams return, with the addition of the Sherwood Park Athletics senior mens team and President Craig Neufeld has stepped down from the position. The league will now look for a new president in advance of the still unannounced Spring Meeting.

Very little informaiton seems to be known about the Sherwood Park Athletics team other than they are from Sherwood Park and will be the PBL's third Athletics team on the schedule. That's right, assuming that Bardo and Rosalind return for the 2017 season, the league will feature 33% of the teams as 'Athletics'. It is expected that the Sherwood Park Athletics would be a young team that provides graduating minor ball players an opportunity to continue to play baseball. The PBL Sherwood Park Athletics would be competing with the Sunburst's AAA Sherwood Park Athletics and the North Central Alberta Baseball League's AA Sherwood Park Athletics for players in a vast pool of minor baseball players in the Sherwood Park Minor Baseball Association. The team is currently looking for player registrations as seen in an advertisement in the Sherwood Park News.  

There is no word yet on who will be stepping up to take on the role of PBL President for the 2017 season, but the league is probably open to nominations of local ball players and community leaders who want to continue the successes of Neufeld.