(rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Ian Gustafson

Continue upward projectory

Gulls focused on bringing a championship to Sylvan Lake

Apr 9, 2025 | 4:03 PM

Last year, was supposed to be the Sylvan Lake Gulls year to bring home their first-ever Western Canadian Baseball League championship.

It appeared for the majority of the 2024 campaign that the Gulls assembled one of the best, if not the best team in franchise history.

Loaded with talent on the mound and at the plate the Gulls won the president’s trophy as the best team in the regular season with a 44-12 record. This was the first time the Gulls had ever done so since entering the WCBL in 2021.

However, despite claiming the new WCBL win record, the Gulls were unable to overcome their kryptonite, the Okotoks Dawgs.

For the third straight year, they fell to the defending champs in the West Division Finals last August in the best-of-three series.

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Now with another offseason to reset and reload, the Gulls enter the 2025 season as hungry as ever to win a title.

They feel like they have the team to do it.

“The big goal is we’re trying to compete day-in and day-out to get that home field advantage in the playoffs,” said General Manager and Head Coach Jason Chatwood.

“We feel that with our crowd and how good we play at home, that’s something we strive for.”

In terms of returning players, there are still a few things up in the air for some players who are pondering other opportunities.

So far, they have Red Deer’s Gavin Galenza coming back, who was an important piece last year at the plate and as a catcher. They’ll also have outfielder Simon Baker and fan favourite Matty Fung will provide much needed leadership to the squad.

Outfielder Brock Tijerina, pitcher Jaxon Zanolli, and pitcher Hunter Jones are also locked in.

Meanwhile, superstar pitcher Josh Tucker will return to the mound. The southpaw was one of the WCBL’s top pitchers the last three years setting the league strikeout record with 91 in 2022.

“These are guys who’ve been there and done it. I think you get those returners back, it helps a lot with the culture of the locker room and welcoming the new guys,” Chatwood added.

“We have some guys who’ve been to Sylvan for multiple years and know the community pretty well.”

Some of the new players fans can get excited about includes infielder Ollie Obenour who suits up for Washington State University. Chatwood is expecting him to play a big role in the battling order.

Jake Martinez, a centre fielder from the University of Texas Arlington, is also expected to be an important piece.

“We’re excited about all of the new guys that we have signed because we feel like they’re going to bring something special to the lineup. That’s why we committed to them,” Chatwood said.

President and COO of the Gulls, Aqil Samuel said they’re excited to get started in their fifth season and want to build on their record-setting campaign last summer.

“We don’t use the terms start up or a new team anymore. It’s all about trying to build a winner on the field and off the field we just keep moving along here,” Samuel said. “We had nearly 50,000 fans here last year and we want to grow that.”

Last year, during the regular season the Gulls ranked third in the WCBL in attendance with 43,093 total fans with an average of 1,539 fans per game. In the playoffs, they added 4,626 total fans.

With demand for tickets on the rise every summer, the Gulls chose not to do any renovations over the offseason. No seats were added but Samuel said they’re working to add more club seats by the summer of 2026.

“We took a bit of a breather on that this year. I think fans will see a few different cosmetic things with new logos to freshen up the in-game experience,” Samuel said.

“We definitely have some expansion plans, it’s just the timing of it that we’re working on. We want to get some more club seats in there. Currently, we have 1,245 seats and we’d love to see that north of 1,500 next year. We’re at a bit of a staged approach and we’re working with the ownership group to see when we can pull the trigger on that.”

The Gulls will begin the 2025 season on May 29 at Gulls Stadium at 7:05 p.m. against the Energy City Cactus Rats out of Spruce Grove, formerly the Edmonton Prospects.

This is also the inaugural season for the Gulls U19 prep team who’ve already played two games against Vauxhall Academy.

The team features most of the players and coaching staff, who led the U18 AAA CarStar Braves to a national championship last summer.

Their first home games will be on April 19 in a double-header against Okotoks Black.

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