High Performance Baseball for Ages 14-18
We are part of the Lower Vancouver Island Baseball Association (LVIBA), which operates the following teams:
- The Victoria Mariners Premier Baseball Club
- The Victoria Mariners Junior Premier Baseball Club
- The Victoria Mariners Bantam Premier Baseball Club (est. 2015)
We are a High Performance Developmental Baseball Program for top level athletes in the junior high/high school age bracket. Our stated objective is to provide the development opportunities to allow our athletes and coaches to advance successfully to the next level of baseball, be that College level or Major League Baseball.
We are a not for profit Society, operating three teams in the following Leagues:
- BC Premier Baseball League, one of the acknowledged top developmental high school leagues in North America, consistently graduating a number of successful MLB and college level players every season including Justin Morneau, Jeff Francis, Rich Harden, Vince Perkins, Mike Saunders and Kyle Orr to name only a few. BC Premier alumni are noted on the www.bcpbl.com website. The level of play, talent and coaching expertise is on a par with the level most Canadians would recognize at the BC Junior Hockey league. The BCPBL rosters players age 15-18.
- BC Junior Premier Baseball League, a developmental league for the younger up and coming talents. The BCJPBL rosters players age 14 to 16.
- BC Bantam Premier Baseball (Prep) League, a new developmental league in the BCPBL for 13-14 year olds. This league will prepare athletes for the Junior Premier and Premier levels, as athletes will experience the same level of coaching expertise, skill development, and competitive play that they will at the two higher levels. A true High Performance league at the Bantam level!
Players are selected to respective teams from across Lower Vancouver Island and placed on the Mariner team best suited for their developmental needs.
Coaches are recruited and developed with a primary goal of player development. We consider winning championships only an eventual by-product of successful development activities. We demand more from our coaches than simply baseball knowledge and experience. Mentorship abilities are crucial in our selection process.
Coaches and managers are provided a stipend, however an assessment of both the knowledge and hours required has all of them paid far less than minimum wage, let alone the wages one would earn recognizing their experience and qualifications.
Executive members, Association Coordinators, and Team Coordinators of our organization are all volunteers, made up of parents of former players, coaches and current parents.
Henderson Park in Oak Bay has been our home, where we share the facility with Carnarvon Midget House league. In 2009 we began a partnership with the City of Victoria and the Seals Baseball Club to share the use of the revived baseball diamond at Royal Athletic Park. During the Winter months, the Mariners workout at the Oak Bay Recreation Centre Indoor Sports Facility. The need for more time at booth indoor and outdoor facilities continues to be a challenge for the amount of training needed by Victoria’s top level athletes.
Where Do We Come From?
Founded originally in 1994 as the Victoria Rockets, we merged with the Victoria Rebels in 1998, later changing the name in 2000 to the current Victoria Mariners.
The organization was originally founded to provide further baseball opportunities for the area’s top level ballplayers looking to extend their season beyond the typical June 30 end to their Babe Ruth season. The focus then was for each of the area’s leagues to form a tournament team and compete for the right to compete in a Provincial Championship. One team would proceed , while the rest of the athletes would have no baseball during the summer. This model clearly did not speak to development.
The Rockets formed teams to compete in various tournaments in the USA during June and July, eventually joining in US leagues. As this model proved successful in developing talent, Rockets were eventually invited to join the BC Premier League, as a second Victoria franchise alongside the Victoria Rebels, with other teams in Duncan, Nanaimo and Parksville. After a year of operating the two separate teams, it became evident that the area lacked the talent to feed two teams, Rockets and Rebels merged into one organization.
The Rockets (soon to be renamed Mariners) and the BCPBL jointly decided to revert to only one Victoria BC Premier league team, The Victoria Mariners. It was felt our developmental goals for both players and coaches would be better achieved by expanding to operate two teams in the BC Minor Midget AAA League. Concurrently, Rockets had still been running teams in the 13 to 15 age group. When a number of local BC Babe Ruth organizations recognized the need to expand development into a summer schedule and joined the BC Minor League, Rockets merged their younger teams together with the governing body GVMBA. We were finally progressing on one of our goals, to bring the local baseball community closer together in building the best development program in BC.
More recently, when the BCPBL decided to expand to build a Junior developmental league, we decided to drop one of our BC Minor Midget AAA teams in favor of running a BCJPBL team, believing that a more age appropriate structure would work better for both remaining teams.
Our Future:
The Mariners organization has evolved over the years, winning a Provincial Championships in both leagues – Premier and Junior Premier. The Mariners have also hosted Premier Championship Tournaments and look forward to hosting more in the future. The Mariners graduate more and more players to both the MLB ranks and US & Canadian Colleges each year. We have also seen former players return to develop and contribute as coaches. If anything is true in the local baseball scene, it is that change is most certainly a constant. Backed by it’s core principles around player and coach development, whatever changes come our way, Victoria Mariners will do its best to adapt while respecting those principles.
Mailing address:
PO Box 44126
2947 Tillicum Rd
Victoria BC V9A 7K1
Email address: VictoriaMariners2014@gmail.com
