Under normal conditions, the North Shore Twins would have started their BC Premier Baseball League campaign last Friday.
The Twins would be looking to defend their title and maintain a proud tradition that includes six championship titles in the last 13 years, and three in the past five seasons. The team frequently boasts junior national team players and plays in the top junior baseball circuit in the country, a league that sends countless players on to university careers and a fair share to the pro leagues as well.
But these, of course, are not normal circumstances. The senior Twins, a group of Grade 11 and 12 players predominantly from the North Shore, were a couple of days away from a trip to a showcase event in Orlando, Fla., when the COVID-19 crisis was transitioning from a worry to a full-blown emergency.
A few days before the crisis broke, the team met to discuss whether or not they should take the trip. Within 48 hours, every pro sports league in Canada and the United States was shut down, and the trip to Orlando was officially scrapped. The Twins haven’t seen each other since.
“It’s weird,” said Brooks McNiven, the former head coach and current pitching coach for the Twins, who is also a teacher and runs the baseball academy for the West Vancouver school district. “The whole thing is weird. I guess we shouldn’t complain, but the weather is amazing and we’re not playing baseball, which kind of sucks.”
With sports leagues shut down around the world, athletes and teams are adjusting to a new reality of training while in isolation. The Twins are in the process of preparing detailed online training plans for their players, but in the meantime have mostly left it to their players to stay sharp.
“We’ve been trying to piece together some home training plans for the guys and send it out to them,” said McNiven. “It's hard to plan, keeping people active with all the restrictions and then like little to no equipment at all. … We’re trying to post stuff and be mindful of like, what they're able to do in the space that they have and the equipment that they have. There’s some great stuff online. It’s taken a while to find it but we’re getting it together we’re going to send it out to them, and then it’s in their hands to do what they want.”
They say necessity breeds innovation, and some of the Twins players have done some interesting things to get their reps in.
Joe Lalonde, a Grade 9 player on one of the younger division teams that funnels into the senior Twins, has been taking cuts in a makeshift batting cage his family has set up.
Twins player Jake Vrlak has been using a ladder to get in some rowing exercises, while several other players have carved out a little outdoor space for a batting tee and net.
Other teams around the North Shore – and indeed around the world – are facing the same challenges. Mountain United is an elite soccer club that combines the top players from the North Shore and Burnaby onto teams that compete in the B.C. Soccer Premier League, the top youth circuit in the province.
The BCSPL kicked off its 2020 season on Feb. 29 and got in just two weekends of play before everything was shut down by the virus. Since then the club has sent out training programs for its players, including fun variations of board games like Monopoly (see photo at the bottom of this article) and Snakes and Ladders that substitute soccer skills for the normal squares players land on. They’ve also collaborated on a number of solo and team videos, including cheeky clips of players juggling and then virtually passing rolls of toilet paper between each other.
It’s a brand new world for teams and players used to joining together multiple times a week for group training sessions and games. The group dymnamic is gone, and there aren’t any coaches there to keep things moving, so training takes a lot more self-motivation, said McNiven.
“It's going be interesting to see who's really motivated and self-driven through this. You’ll be able to tell who has been putting in the work, that's for sure,” said McNiven, adding that the Twins are training as if there still might be a shortened season in the summer. “I think the older guys are pretty good [at self-motivation], for the most part. The seniors are doing a pretty good job of trying to get their work in. … I've been leaving gear outside my house for guys, and they've been swinging by and picking it up and we’re trying to get as much gear to them as possible so that they can work at home. It’s better that they have it then it just sitting in my garage.”
For now, like everyone else around Canada at least, the Twins and other teams on the North Shore are playing wait and see while the virus runs its course and health officials work to keep citizens safe.
“There's lots of questions and not many answers,” said McNiven. “And we're just trying to do our best with what we have.”
Are you a North Shore athlete finding creative ways to stay sharp? Find or post this article on social media channels and post your own videos and photos. We'd love to see how you are putting in the work!
