AIA Hoping to Make Move to North Pole
June 18, 2000, Daily News-Miner
By RICHARD LARSON
The Alaska Goldpanners could have a new rival in the Alaska Baseball League as soon as next year.
The Athletes in Action team that finished up a three-game series with the Goldpanners on Saturday might move its home base to North Pole.
While many details are yet to be worked out, both AIA coach Courtney Shawley and Goldpanners General Manager Don Dennis seem optimistic that AIA would make the move to North Pole within the next three years and join the Alaska Baseball League.
"I think it would be an extremely positive situation from all aspects with the quality of people they have and the quality of baseball they play," Dennis said. "It would be a plus for them and it certainly would be a plus for us."
Shawly said his general manager, Jason Lester, approached him three years ago about AIA moving to the Alaska League. The team currently is based in Kansas City, Mo., and plays in the MINK (Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas) League.
"Both sides have been trying to close the deal since that time and every year we've been getting closer," Shawley said. "I think it would be an honor to play baseball up here all summer.
"It could be next year. I think it would be safe to say that we would be here in the next two or three years. We are working out the details, but we are not in a rush."
Athletes in Action is a nondenominational baseball team that ministers the word of God. The team is run under the sphere of Campus Crusade for Christ and, like the six teams currently in the ABL, consists almost entirely of college players that are hopeful of being drafted by professional baseball.
"The team is a Christian baseball team," Shawley said. "All the players have a faith in Jesus Christ and we share, spread the word with other teams and crowds."
Players who make the AIA team have to, "meet our guidelines for talent and for where they are at in their spiritual walk with Jesus," Shawley said. "The players we get are good players and they go through an intensive screening process. We make sure they are quality individuals. We want to have good teams and make a positive impact."
Although the team currently has access to the chaplain of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals, and members of those teams often spend time with AIA, Shawley said the team would benefit from moving to North Pole.
"It puts us in one of the best, if not the best, league in the nation," Shawley said. "And it gives us ministry opportunites in Alaska.
"In my opinion, if we join the ABL, we should be able to field an even better team," Shawley added. "Getting players to come to the Alaska League is easy. It is one of the top two leagues (along with the Cape Cod League) in the U.S."
AIA is also looking at the Mat-Su Valley area if it was to join the ABL, but currently its top prioty is North Pole. The reputation of North Pole as a strong religous community would play a role in AIA moving there, according to Shawley.
"That is something that would play into consideration," Shawley said. "There is great potential for community and church support."
Shawley said the team likely would start out playing at Growden Park or Hermon Brothers Field in Palmer until the facilities at North Pole would be able to support the team. Dennis seemed hopeful that the Goldpanners and AIA would share Growden Park.
"The way I envision it is us playing a team three or four times then North Pole (AIA) coming back and playing that same team three or four times," Dennis said. "The advantage for baseball in Fairbanks would be that there would be a game almost every night of the summer. It would be close to identical to what we did when the North Pole Nicks were here."
Dennis said AIA would benefit from using Growden because it wouldn't have to pay facility costs and it would be able to use the Olympic Village--the collection of trailer homes just outside the leftfield dugout at Growden--to house visiting teams.
The North Pole Nicks played most of their games at Growden before moving to Newby Field in North Pole. The team folded after the 1987 season. A team had been put together for the 1988 season, but when Mat-Su and the Anchorage Glacier Pilots folded before the '88 season, the Nicks dropped out too.
At that point Kenai, the Anchorage Bucs, Fairbanks, San Francisco, Pullman, Wash., and Hawaii were the only teams in the league. Mat-Su and the Glacier Pilots both have since rejoined the ABL.
There have been some scheduling difficulties with the Hawaii Island Movers in recent years and if those difficulties eventually became something that could not be worked out, AIA's joining the ABL would still leave six teams in the league.
"The way I see them joining would work out pretty easily as far as the league is concerned," Dennis said. "It would give us six teams in Alaska and help out with the schedule."
Shawley added, "The Alaska G.M.'s have done a lot of legwork for us, making sure that if we get here we are going to be successful. If we put a team here, we want to make sure it is going to be here for a long time."
June 18, 2000, Daily News-Miner
