Alberta Dugout Stories: The Podcast

It all changed in the blink of an eye for Cohen Achen. The up-and-coming pitcher was on the mound for Big Bend Community College in early-2020 when he was hit in the face by a comebacker. He considers himself lucky that it was in a spot near the eye that didn’t damage the orbital bone, jaw bone or hit his temple. But he definitely had a concussion and a nasty bump that took about three months to h...

It hasn’t been an easy road for Chas Wheatley. The Edmonton-area pitcher was off to a flying start in his baseball career, but then an ulnar nerve injury in the summer of 2018 led to surgery. Add in the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s been a long time since he’s been on the field for actual game action. The 6-foot-7 right-hander faced the additional challenge of watching other players his age commit t...

We open up the episode by paying tribute to long-time and well-respected umpire Mitch Ball , who passed away last weekend after battling COVID-19. Someone who has been on the front lines facing the pandemic on a daily basis is Heidi Northcott. A long-time member of Baseball Alberta and Baseball Canada’s women’s programs as a pitcher, the Rocky Mountain House native is now a Registered Respiratory...

As the college baseball season continues stateside, we’ve had the pleasure of chatting with some of the Alberta products who have been turning heads. And we’ll continue that theme this week with Tristan Peters. Originally from Winkler, Manitoba, he moved to Alberta in high school to be part of the Dawgs Academy program. The 6-foot, 180-pound outfielder moved on to star at Chandler-Gilbert before h...

It has been 40 years since Alberta baseball fans were first introduced to the Pacific Coast League. On April 14, 1981, the Edmonton Trappers took to the field on the road against the Portland Beavers. Eight days later, April 22nd, the Trappers made their debut on home turf , taking on the Tacoma Tigers at Renfrew Park. It was quite the journey in making that happen. Efforts to start a new professi...

We first met Shawn Grandmont back in 2018 when he was with the College of Southern Idaho when they went to the JUCO World Series. We wrote up a story to preview the event , and have kept tabs on him ever since. Grandmont moved up to NCAA Division II Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho, which is about a two-hour drive from CSI. Over the last three years, the Lethbridge product has continu...

Our guest this week is a man who has dreams of being on an Opening Day roster in the not-too-distant future. Damiano Palmegiani has had quite the journey already in his young baseball career. The native of Surrey, BC came to Alberta as a teenager to take his career to the next level with Vauxhall Academy. He did that in spades, making it to the Tournament-12 in Toronto and then Baseball Canada’s J...

As March winds to a close, we thought we’d take another opportunity to recognize International Women’s Day by welcoming another former member of Baseball Alberta ’s Women’s team to the podcast. And her story is a fascinating one. Kandi Wyatt played a lot of baseball growing up in Rocky Mountain House. Mainly a catcher, Wyatt made her way up to the provincial team, winning gold at nationals in 2006...

We’ve been lucky enough to have quite a few conversations over the last couple of years around the women’s game in this province and highlighted them on social media back on #InternationalWomensDay. From profiling players like Nicole Luchanski , Kelsey Lalor , Tara Sliwkanich , Ellie Jespersen and Madison Willan to our chat with Baseball Alberta’s Barb Northcott and Chris James about the growth of...

Calgary’s Soren Graversen has been on a tear at William Penn University. As we record this, the Dawgs Academy grad is hitting .395 with five home runs and 20 RBIs. I reached out to him after an insane day at the plate on February 23rd. In a doubleheader against St. Xavier and Harris-Stowe State, he hit three home runs and 8 RBIs . The 6-4, 195-pound junior is back to having fun at the ballpark aga...

Ty Scott of the Bryan College Lions was named to our 2020 All-Alberta Team back in January , after hitting .417 with four home runs, 15 RBIs and five stolen bases in just 20 games before the pandemic hit. As a senior this year, the Calgary product is back to his old tricks, hitting .415 with three homers, 12 RBIs and seven stolen bases in 16 contests. No hit this year was bigger than a walk-off ho...

There aren’t many hats Les McTavish hasn’t warn in Southern Alberta baseball. From a young athlete to playing at Prairie Baseball Academy over to Washington State University to some time with the Oyen Pronghorns and Lethbridge Bulls before heading to coaching with the American Legion Lethbridge Elks, the PBA, Team Alberta, the Bulls, the Canadian Junior National Team and now with the Vauxhall Acad...

Calgary’s Geoff Freeborn has made a name for himself in a variety of ways, breaking onto the scene with the hometown Vipers between 2006 and 2008, including an All Star calibre season. He went onto spend years traveling around the world, then coaching, leading to a profile we wrote on him a little more than three years ago . We hadn’t had him on the podcast yet, so this seemed like a great opportu...

The COVID-19 pandemic has left many bats on shoulders around this province, as athletes, coaches and everyone else involved the game are relegated to their garages and basements, waiting to maybe get to train again in familiar facilities. Add in this blast from Old Man Winter and those quarters have been tight lately. So it was welcome news to see some training resume on Monday and many were chomp...

The Florida Gators are one of the top-ranked NCAA teams heading into the spring and one of the people leading the charge from the bench is from our province. Lars Davis grew up in Grande Prairie , went to Prairie Baseball Academy and was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2003 and the Colorado Rockies in 2007. That led to an eight-year professional career before he landed with the Gators as their vo...

Before we took our winter break, the college commitment announcements were coming in fast and furious. We spent a little time getting to know some of those young athletes and we thought we’d continue that heading into the new year. On this week's edition of Alberta Dugout Stories: The Podcast, we introduce you to Connor Crowson and Ryan Ludwig. Crowson is an Okotoks product who came up through the...

It might have been a small sample size, but 2020 was shaping up to be quite a year for many of Alberta’s baseball players who were taking the field in American colleges. Teams were lucky to get in 20 games before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but they were being treated to some fantastic outings by athletes from our province. That led to us combing through the stats reports to come up with our 2020 A...

Merry Belated Christmas and Happy New Year! Welcome to the new season of #ADSPodcast! In our first episode of the new season, we chat with the newly-minted mental health and mindset coach of Dawgs Academy in Okotoks, Laura Redgate. She owns Baseline Therapy and works with athletes and others in hopes of ending the stigma around mental health in sport. And while we spent a lot of time talking about...

Baseball Santa stops by to read a new spin on the classic "Twas the Night Before Christmas." From our dugouts to yours, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a home run of a year in 2021!

It’s been a year, hasn’t it? Well, 2020 certainly didn’t work out the way anyone would have guessed when January started and we are certainly in that same boat. Right around now, we’re usually doing stories on Baseball Alberta award winners and maybe doing a quick “season in review” with a few of the pros. But none of those things happened. However, Ian and Joe sit down to talk about the year that...

We have been lucky enough to share some of the stories of Alberta's baseball players announcing their commitments to post-secondary institutions stateside recently. This one has a bit of a twist, in that on the same day Jonah Arseneau of the Calgary Bucks announced he had verbally committed to Minot State University , he was also named to New Zealand's U18 National Team . So how does a kid from Ca...

August 1, 2019 will be a date forever etched not only on the mind of Shaun Atamanchuk, but also through the scars on his arm. That's the date the Beaumont native went under the knife for Tommy John Surgery. The last year has been a challenging one for the 6-foot-4 right-hander, who took to Instagram to document the journey for not only himself, but for those having to go through the same recovery....

There have been a number of Alberta-based baseball players making their college commitment announcements recently and so we wanted to catch up with some of those athletes. On this week's edition of the podcast, we caught up with two from Dawgs Academy in Okotoks. Simon Lusignan's story is an interesting one, being from Quebec and having to better his English while also bettering his pitching skill...

You know things are bad when the veteran of your team says “hey boss, this team sucks balls.” You also know things are bad when the general manager literally camps out on the field until his team snaps a dreadful losing streak. And you know things are bad when that story specifically not only garners local headlines and news coverage, but goes national and even makes it to the Los Angeles Times an...

We first met Vauxhall Academy’s Jackson Clemett in a web story we did following his appearance at the T-12 at Rogers Centre in Toronto just over a year ago. Things haven’t slowed down for the grade 12 student, as in the spring he announced his commitment to the University of Utah. And over the last couple of weeks, he joined fellow Jet Anson McGorman for the Future Stars Series. The Program-15 eve...