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Young leads returnees contingent as HarbourCats open WCL season with a win

Victoria hosts Kamloops again Saturday night

Familiarity breeds resentment, the adage goes, but it provides contentment for Russell Young. The former Canadian junior national team player is happy to be returning to Wilson’s Group Stadium at Royal Athletic Park and was in the starting nine as the club opened its 2023 West Coast League season Friday night with a 13-3 victory over the Kamloops NorthPaws.

“It’s great to return. The fans and the park environment really make it the experience that it is,” said the compact five-foot-11 catcher from Surrey, who finished opening night 2-for-3 with a home run and three runs scored. “You feel the community at your back.”

Young was the second-ranked catcher in B.C. in 2020 by Perfect Game and the 22nd overall prospect in the province and was recruited by the Gonzaga Bulldogs of the NCAA. Young wasn’t so much a revelation last season for the HarbourCats as he was simply fulfilling his potential with a .295 batting average and two home runs, including a season-highlight grand slam in the bottom of the eighth inning that gave Victoria a dramatic rally victory over the Yakima Valley Pippins. Young led the HarbourCats in the playoffs with a searing .714 batting average as he connected on five hits in his seven plate appearances over Victoria’s two post-season games.

Young’s presence will go a long way toward providing the HarbourCats with stability this season behind the plate.

“There are a lot of new faces and some old ones, too,” said Young, as he went through his paces before Friday night’s opener against the NorthPaws.

Young lists his favourite movie as the Benchwarmers but he won’t be doing much of that this season as a key part of the HarbourCats’ defence. Young has proved he can also wield the bat and said he appreciates head coach Todd Haney’s aggressive offensive style.

“We’re all about disrupting the other team and making them make mistakes,” said Young, now with the UBC Thunderbirds after playing for Gonzaga and Johnson County Community College.

Young is a star in the classroom as well, making the Dean’s List at Gonzaga and the NJCAA All-Academic first-team with a grade point average of 4.0 at Johnson County.

Young lists his favourite baseball moment to date being an exhibition game against the Toronto Blue Jays when he was a member of the Canadian junior national team. Everybody in the WCL dreams of doing such things for real one day.

Four former HarbourCats have gone on to play in Major League Baseball. Nick Pivetta is with the Boston Red Sox, Andrew Vaughan with the Chicago White Sox and Nathan Lukes with the Blue Jays. Alex De Goti has played with the Houston Astros. There are 40 WCL alumni in the MLB this season and 20 who played in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

“Those guys paved the path,” said Young.

“They were once in our shoes. They showed you can do it.”

The WCL is among several summer collegiate leagues across North America in which NCAA and NAIA players can extend their seasons into the summer after their university and college seasons end in the spring.

All 16 WCL teams were in action in B.C., Washington and Oregon on opening night to begin their 54-game regular season campaigns through Aug. 6.

“It’s both exciting and humbling to be entering my fifth season with this tremendous league,” WCL commissioner Rob Neyer said in a statement.

“When I think about how hard everyone’s worked to build the West Coast League, now with 16 teams and our ever-increasing wealth of talent, I feel truly blessed to be a part of it all.”

The playoffs will again include eight teams, with all eight hosting at least one playoff game, to help extend interest through the summer.

“We considered last year’s post-season format a sort of experiment, perhaps lasting just one year,” said Neyer.

“But everyone involved was tremendously pleased with the added excitement for our fans and players, and we’re looking forward to more of the same this year.”

In keeping with the baseball-wide trend of speeding up play, the WCL has instigated a 20-second “action clock” along with limiting the time between innings to two minutes. The umpires will administer those rules through stopwatches. Installing time clocks, as in MLB stadiums, was too cost prohibitive for the amateur WCL.

ON THE DIAMOND: The HarbourCats used a six-run sixth inning to put away the NorthPaws in front of 2,129 fans. First baseman Ryan Magdic, from Florida Southern College, led the attack with two hits and two RBIs. Dawson Huford, out of Southern Arkansas, picked up the win on the hill, going six innings and giving up just three hits. The teams meet again today and Sunday.

cdheensaw@timescolonist.com