The Nanaimo NightOwls, a year later than expected due to the pandemic, will finally take flight tonight in the West Coast League at Portland against the Pickles.
The home opener is Friday evening against the fellow-expansion Edmonton Riverhawks at Serauxmen Stadium, a facility that was opened in 1976 by the late baseball great Mickey Mantle. A new scoreboard and eight LED lighting poles of between 21 to 24 metres have been installed, at a cost of $1.1-million, to flood-light the formerly light-less stadium for WCL night games. That’s rather fitting for a team named Owls.
But there have been some delays to other stadium upgrades with planned new baseline bleachers yet to be installed and some paving still to do around the existing grandstand.
“The wet winter weather interrupted some of the construction phase and it’s going to be to the wire getting to the inaugural home opener but we’ll be ready to go Friday,” said Jim Swanson, co-owner, managing partner and acting GM of the NightOwls.
Ticketing has been complicated by the late arrival of the baseline bleachers, said Swanson, and that could take some juggling for early home games. But the field of play has been ready for some time to welcome NCAA Div. 1 players from top conferences, he added, and that’s what matters most.
The NightOwls will literally add a flavourful addition to the WCL, thanks to the Harbour City’s most iconic product. The players will wear jerseys bearing a cartoon image of a Nanaimo Bar with two eyes, a mouth and forelock for matinée games. That image of the bar will also feature on the sleeves of all the club’s jerseys. The famous sweet confection will be used to market the club in several ways. That includes when the Nanaimo club is on the road and the delicacy will be sold in the concessions of the home team’s stadiums in a sponsorship deal with Save-on-Foods. It’s sort of like when the Hershey Bears of the American Hockey League used to provide the candy bar to fans entering the arenas, home and on the road.
Meanwhile, Swanson pointed to the natural Island-derby rivalry that will be created when the NightOwls play the HarbourCats. It will add to the existing Nanaimo-Victoria derbies featuring the Clippers and Grizzlies in the sa国际传媒 Hockey League, Timbermen and Shamrocks in the Western Lacrosse Association, Raiders and Rebels in the sa国际传媒 Football Conference and VIU and Camosun in the Pacwest college conference.
“It’s a big-brother Victoria versus little-brother Nanaimo thing — kind of like Vancouver-Victoria at the other end of the scale — and we’re looking forward to what will be a lively NightOwls-HarbourCats rivalry,” said Swanson.
The NightOwls play the HarbourCats in Victoria June 7-9 and host the ’Cats in Nanaimo from July 12-14.
The job of building the NightOwls initial roster has gone to Greg Frady, the inaugural head coach. Frady coached the Georgia State University Panthers for 13 seasons from 2007 to 2019 and the German national team for 11 years. He guided Georgia State to four Sun Belt conference tournament appearances and a conference championship and NCAA regional tournament appearance in 2009. He took Germany, a nation with very little background in baseball, into the world top-20 during his tenure as national team head coach from 2004 to 2015.
