With an eye towards the future and honouring the past, the Moose Jaw Minor Baseball Association have announced a big change for the 2019 season.

The MJMBA’s Board of Directors have decided to unify the association under one team name and they decided to go with the "Canucks".

"A lot of planning, talk and discussion went into this name change," said Brett Walchuk, President of the MJMBA.

The Board put together a committee, which went back through Moose Jaw’s baseball history to help decide on a name that would honour that rich history and give the association a unified name to play under.

The "Canucks" name can be traced back to 1946 when it was worn by a senior team for about a decade and it has been used by the minor program in the city for over 40 years, most recently in the midget AA division.

"It’s a good name for the organization and it’s a great move, we join the ranks of everybody else in the province with a single name throughout the entire organization," said Walchuk.

The local association featured the Junior AAA Regals, the Bantam AA Mallards and the Mosquito AAA Prairie Dogs during the 2018 season and they will all eventually fall under the "Canucks" name.

"We’re phasing it in over a four-year plan," said Walchuk. "We’re going to have a couple new teams next year that will be the Canucks and then we have a few jerseys that we’ve just purchased in the last few years that still have a life of 1-2 years left, so every time that we need new jerseys for a team, we’re going to bring them on board to the Canucks’ name."

He added, "Having the Canucks all the way up from Mosquito all the way up to Junior will help us with organizational things like hats, jerseys and other merchandise."

As they prepare for the new season, the Association will be hosting their annual general meeting on Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. in the Curling Room at Mosaic Place. 

For more information on the league, check out their new website at MooseJawMinorBaseball.com.