Baseball's back

Drew Childs is trying to one-up Deion Sanders.

A former star with the now-defunct K&A Wolverines of the Superior International Junior Hockey League, the 22-year-old wound up in the suburbs of St. Louis on a golf scholarship.

When his golf game went south, he returned to hockey, but injuries got the best of him. This fall the Thunder Bay native finds himself on the baseball diamond, one of 35 players seeking a spot on Lakehead University’s latest club team.

Childs, who had 35 points in the Wolverines final campaign in 2009-10, said he came back to Thunder Bay this summer and took up ball all over again, donning an Athletics jersey for a season of Men’s Summer League play.

“I’ve got a bad shoulder and a bad knee, so I can’t really do the contact thing anymore,” said Childs, between cuts at Baseball Central Tuesday evening.

“This summer I decided to play with my buddy’s baseball team. I had a pretty good summer, so I thought I’d give it a shot out here on the baseball field for LU.”

He’s excited to see baseball return to the school, after a 10-year absence. The team, under the tutelage of coaches Jason Hart and Kevin McCallum, has lined up a 55-game schedule playing college teams from south of the border, including the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, which doesn’t have an NCAA squad.

The ultimate goal, down the road, is to join the National Intercollegiate Athletics Association, a secondary circuit to the NCAA. There present status allows the school to compete for a championship, an added bonus.

“I think it’s a really good thing,” said an out-of-breath Childs. “There are a lot of good ballplayers in the city. There are two good programs here, the Mountain Hawks and the (Northwest) Slam. Coach Hart is with the Slam, and I’ve seen what he’s done with them.”

Zachary Kotarac, a budding shortstop and pitcher fresh out of St. Ignatius High School, is a graduate of the Slam program, and a likely lock on the first-year squad.

Like Childs, it means a lot to him to have the program reinstated.

“I’ve been searching around for a long time looking for a program because I knew we never had one here. I was looking in the States mostly and making some hard decisions. The cost was really a big amount. It was nice to know at LU there was going to be a program and it made my decision a lot easier,” he said.

McCallum, the assistant coach, said the program will face plenty of obstacles in its infancy, not the least being money.

As a club team, the help from the university is minimal. The school, under equal playing regulations, would have to create a women’s team were the latest Thunderwolves squad to go the varsity route.

That still hasn’t lowered the expectations of the coaching staff.

McCallum said there’s plenty of talent in training camp, more than enough to field a competitive team that won’t embarrass itself in year one.

“It’s a good mix between guys from southern Ontario and Thunder Bay. We’ve had four or five surprises we weren’t expecting. Our pitching’s going to be a little light, but I think our hitting and our speed’s gonna make up for that,” McCallum said.

“We knew there was going to be a good core of kids already at the university, some of them who haven’t played baseball in two or three years and it gives them a chance to come back and play.”

The squad will play a short fall schedule, including conference games at Baseball Central on Oct. 1 and 2 against Winona State University.

The season will resume in the spring, when the team heads to Texas for a week. The final roster is expected to be announced on Friday.