It’s a new baseball season, and it’s a new start in another way for the Nanaimo NightOwls.
The city’s West Coast League baseball team begins the season this Friday, May 30, with a new head coach – Nanaimo’s own Cody Andreychuk.
Andreychuk played at Serauxmen Stadium with the Nanaimo Pirates and the VIU Mariners, and has since gained more than a decade of coaching experience in the U.S., the past four years as head coach at the University of Pikeville in Kentucky.
He and his daughter had been spending a month in Nanaimo each summer anyway, so when the NightOwls coaching job opened up, it felt perfect.
“I get to come back to where it all started for me, where I started enjoying the love for the game of baseball…” Andreychuk said. “I’m looking forward to the opportunity to come back and take us to the playoffs, which I think the city needs and I think the organization needs.”
Greg Frady coached the NightOwls their first three seasons, and the club finished just under .500 each of the past two summers and is looking to break through. It will be a different group, as it is every year at the collegiate level. Andreychuk has been heavily involved in recruiting – the WCL is considered one of the best summer leagues and is itself a draw, but the Nanaimoite was also able to sell players on the notion of spending a summer on Vancouver Island.
He thinks NightOwls coaches and management have been able to piece together a group that’s capable of success.
“It’s hard to say. You bring guys in and you think they’re going to be really good and they’ve put up good numbers at their previous programs, but you put a wood bat in their hand and it might be a little different,” he said.
Andreychuk has experience coaching at the highest calibre of summer collegiate ball, the Cape Cod Baseball League, and while the program was highly successful in developing players as individuals, the team chemistry was never really there. Team chemistry and team culture can’t be forced, the coach said, and will have to come from within the guys who come to Nanaimo to be part of the NightOwls.
“You’re going to have a bunch of individuals that come from different places and that’s the challenge of getting them to buy in to what the vision is and … what the organization needs,” he said. “At the same time, all these guys that are coming up here, they’re trying to get better themselves individually and get reps for them to be ready to go back to their college programs and progress their careers.”
The NightOwls will start working toward all of those goals this week, as they start the season with a three-game series at home against the Bellingham Bells. Adison Mattix will be Nanaimo’s starting pitcher and there should be plenty of excitement in the stands on opening night. There will also be excitement in the dugout from the team’s new coach.
“I think it’s going to be a little overwhelming when the game starts, because like I said, it’s a full-circle moment for me,” Andreychuk said. "I’m a kid that grew up in the NMBA. To be able to come back and coach at the highest level you can [here], it’s a very surreal moment and I’m lucky to do it.”
GAME ON … The NightOwls play a pre-season game against the Mid Island Pirates on Thursday, May 29, at 6:35 p.m. The home opener against the Bells is Friday, May 30, at 6:35 p.m., and the teams also play Saturday, May 31, at 6:35 p.m. and Sunday, June 1, at 1:05 p.m. For ticket information, visit .