The Boston University men’s club baseball team now has something more than a handshake and a pat on the back to play for this year.
That’s because the team moved from the New England Club Baseball Association, where conference play is the end of the road, to the National Club Baseball Association, where they can now qualify for a postseason tournament that culminates with the World Series for club baseball in the sunny state of Florida.
“[The NECBA] was just a New England thing, not affiliated with anything else,” said senior captain Nando Trindade. “Last year we won the conference and it was like, ‘That’s that, good job.’ There was nothing else to play for.
“Now this gives us something to really play for. It’s the best we can do without being a varsity team.”
The move from the New England league to the national league allows the Terriers to qualify for a postseason tournament for the first time in the club’s history. The team will be allocated to the Empire East Conference, which will become the Northeast Athletic Conference.
They’ll play teams like Holy Cross, UMass-Amherst, Union College and the University at Albany. The winner of the conference will qualify for the regionals in Williamsport, Pa., while the regional champion will move on to the World Series in Florida.
One team from each region qualifies to go to Florida, where they will compete in an eight-team tournament for the national title of club baseball.
But that’s just one of the advantages of the move to the National Association. Another benefit, according to Trindade, is the orderliness of the new league.
“This league is a lot more organized,” Trindade said. “Teams like Fairfield and Northeastern that have just started their clubs [in the previous league] were sort of disorganized – like we were a few years ago. But now we’ve established ourselves.
It’s just a far superior league.”
Trindade said that while he recognizes the competition will be stiffer, he feels that based on its previous results, his team can handle it.
“We played Holy Cross and played .500 baseball against them, we played Union and beat them,” he said. “I’d say the first year, finishing third would be acceptable. We’ll probably aim for third and shoot for second.”
