WCBL holding ‘Rural Roots’ game between Bulls, Gulls in Oyen this summer

By Lethbridge Herald on March 14, 2025.

Herald File photo by Justin Seward Herald File photo by JUSTIN SEWARD Lethbridge Bulls Kalem Haney throws to first base to attempt the double play as Sylvan Lake Gulls Jason Green slides into second base during Western Canadian Baseball League action last summer. Both teams will partcipate in the Rural Roots Baseball Classic this June in Oyen.

SOUTHERN ALBERTA NEWSPAPERS 

The Western Canadian Baseball League will return to its roots this summer

The WCBL is holding an inaugural Rural Roots Baseball Classic, paying homage to its history with a regular-season game between the Lethbridge Bulls and Sylvan Lake Gulls at Doug Lehman Field in Oyen on June 8.

In a press release Thursday, the WCBL says Oyen was selected as the first host of the Rural Roots classic, a weekend to become tradition for the league, in celebration of the Oyen Pronghorns championship season in the Saskatchewan Major Baseball League in 1995.

“We are very excited for the Rural Roots Baseball Classic, this is our version of Major League Baseball’s Field of Dreams game that they hold in Iowa,” WCBL president Kevin Kvame said in a release.

“We’re going to try to move it around each year to a historical baseball location in our footprint and put on a regular-season WCBL game with two of our franchises. We’re excited to start in Oyen with a big community festival that will salute the Pronghorns.”

In a press conference held at Spitz Stadium in Lethbridge that was also live-streamed on the WCBL’s YouTube page, Kvame says they have a list of communities they would like to host future classics in with nothing set yet for those future games.

The Pronghorns were the first team from Alberta to win a title in the SMBL and they opened the door for the Lethbridge Bulls to join the league in 1999. That league eventually changed to the Western Major Baseball League in 2002 until it was rebranded into the current WCBL in 2018.

Planned events during the Rural Roots Classic include a golf tournament, barbecue, beer gardens, pancake breakfast, youth baseball camp and a 30th reunion of the ’95 Pronghorns team.

Along with the Classic game between the Gulls and Bulls, there is a 13U game scheduled for a team from Oyen and one from Lethbridge. The WCBL says there are more festivities to be announced, with tickets available for the game on the Lethbridge Bulls website.