Baseball Canada Cancels All National Championships
Posted April 23, 2020
On Thursday April 23, Baseball Canada announced that all 2020 National Championships were being cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of eleven Baseball Canada events were cancelled ranging from 13U National Championships all the way up to senior men’s and women’s National Championship tournaments.
The cancellation effects two national tournaments that were set to be held in Alberta. From August 5-9, 2020 Fort McMurray was playing host to the Baseball Canada Cup (17) while Okotoks was scheduled to host the Ray Carter Cup (15U Championship) from August 27-30. Fort McMurray is currently scheduled to host the 18U National Championship in August 2021 while Red Deer will host the Senior Men’s National Championship August 26-29, 2021.
From the Baseball Canada announcement which you can read in it’s entirety here: "Baseball Canada’s Board of Directors along with the Executive Committee have made the difficult decision to cancel all 2020 Baseball Canada National Championships due to the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Baseball Canada President Jason Dickson stated, “After extensive discussions and careful consideration among our executive committee and board of directors, we arrived at the decision to cancel all of our 2020 national championships. Although this decision will be disappointing to many across the Canadian baseball community, we felt it was the best decision to make given that the health and welfare of our members is paramount in these uncertain times.”
The statement would go on to say that this decision does not cancel the 2020 baseball season across the country and each provincial will decide the best course of action for their province and provincial tournaments as they see fit. There is no information available on Western Canadian baseball tournaments but one has to think they to are under review for the 2020 season. There are two Alberta sites penciled in as hosts for Western Canadian Championships. Edmonton is scheduled to host the 15U Western Championship while Provost has the AA Minor Western Championships, both on August 21-23.
Everyone will now wait to see what guidelines will come from Baseball Alberta regarding rep baseball and Provincial Championships. There appears to be hope that restrictions will begin to ease shortly, but fear that lifting too many too soon will lead to a surge in cases of Covid-19 and tough restrictions being needed to be put back in place. All we can do for the time being is to Stay Home and Stay Safe.
