Nolan Hull is supposed to be living and playing baseball on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains.
Instead, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he’s still in his hometown of Prince George, British Columbia, taking first-year engineering classes from the University of Calgary through a video feed on his computer. As for baseball, it’s on hold and he’s not sure when he will finally get the chance to suit up for the U of C Dinos of the Canadian College Baseball Conference.
For the 18-year-old Hull, in-person schooling and baseball would have started in September 2020. Now in the early days of 2021, he’s still waiting to see what will happen with school and baseball and life in general.
“Late last summer I got a couple of texts from the coach, asking me what my plans were, and it just seemed like nothing was going to open so the best choice for me was to stay in town and save rent money and everything and just take school online,” said Hull, a catcher when he’s on the diamond. “Nothing’s open, there are no practices, so there’s no point even being there.”
Hull is like so many student-athletes across Canada and around the world – he’s missing out on the opportunity to experience college or university life the way it was meant to be experienced, and, athletically, he’s sidelined indefinitely instead of playing the sport he loves.
“It’s been a tough year,” said Hull, a product of the Prince George Youth Baseball Association who contributed to multiple provincial championship titles during his years in the PGYBA’s all-star program. “Baseball was a lot of my social life. You can’t see your friends, there’s no baseball. I’ve sat in my room for probably four months, just doing schoolwork, so it’s definitely a big change from what I was expecting. You think your first year university you’re going to play baseball and you’re going to go to school. You’re going to be on campus all the time and you’re going to have fun, and I’ve been in my room on my computer.”
Hull has been trying to stay in shape using his home gym. And, in early January, he started attending indoor baseball workouts at the Northern Sport Centre fieldhouse on the University of Northern British Columbia’s Prince George campus. The splash of baseball has been a much-needed tonic for him.
“It’s the best feeling in the world – to not throw a baseball for three months and then to go and throw a baseball,” he said. “But, man, was I ever out of shape. I couldn’t walk for the next week. I never want to feel like that again because I never want to stop playing for three months.”
On its website, the CCBC indicates it will work to ensure that the 2021 season is “the best possible.” The league features four teams in B.C. (Okanagan College Coyotes, Kelowna; Thompson Rivers University WolfPack, Kamloops; University of the Fraser Valley Cascades, Abbotsford; Vancouver Island Mariners, Nanaimo) and three in Alberta. The other Alberta clubs are Edmonton Collegiate and the Lethbridge-based Prairie Baseball Academy Dawgs.
The 2021-22 season will see the addition of the Victoria Golden Tide, which will be formed by players from the University of Victoria and Camosun College. The team is scheduled to play its first conference games in the spring of 2022. Its home field will be Royal Athletic Park, the same facility that houses the Victoria HarbourCats of the West Coast League. The WCL is a premier summer loop for top collegiate-level players from Canada and the United States.
Jason Peters is a freelance writer and editor based in Prince George, British Columbia. Visit his website at www.frontpagepublications.net.
