By ADEM SARICAOGLU
WILLIAMSTOWN will not be playing Division One baseball this summer, despite claiming the Division Two title back in March.
Rigid junior requirements will keep the Wolves out of the top flight this coming season, but after Baseball Victoria flirted with the idea of introducing a new premier league structure for this summer, Williamstown made its case for promotion.
Those plans have now been shelved for at least 12 months, meaning the Wolves, for now at least, do not qualify for top flight baseball just yet.
“We had a couple of meetings with Baseball Victoria with the pennant committee about what was going to happen with the structure of the league next year,” club president Ryan Camov explained.
“There were going to be some sort of changes to the league and we were preparing ourselves for some of those eventualities and obviously the eventualities if nothing happened as well.
“But seeing there’s going to be no real significant changes, we were faced with the issue of it still being based on the junior criteria to be promoted, and we just don’t meet that criteria.”
Camov admitted it was a disappointing result for his club to remain in Division Two.
“It’s frustrating for a club that’s trying to grow and trying to expand and push itself to hit artificial barriers like this,” he said.
“Something like a junior criteria isn’t necessarily an even appraisal of the amount of work and energy that a club puts into getting participants into the sport, and obviously geographically we’re in a bit of a bind.
“We’ve got water surrounding the club on two sides and we’ve got another baseball club within a couple kilometres of us, so it does make recruiting much harder.
“It’s a hard and bitter pill to swallow for some of the guys in our senior playing group to not get the chance to play at a higher level.”
However, Camov is aware on-field success often translates to off-field success, and the Wolves will embark on their 2013-14 campaign with renewed optimism the club will grow.
A new sponsorship deal with the Williamstown Football Club is expected to boost the club’s junior operations, while in the senior ranks Camov is confident back-to-back pennants can be achieved.
“We’re trying to look at the club holistically and it’s not just about how the men’s first team goes,” Camov said.
“It’s about the depth of the club across all four, or more (senior) teams and across juniors as well.”
