Canadian Collegiate Baseball Association

From BR Bullpen

History[edit]

Formally known as the CIBA, the Canadian Intercollegiate Baseball Association was initiated in Montreal on August 24, 1994 with four founding teams: McGill University, Durham College, the University of Guelph and McMaster University. The first two CIBA championships were hosted in Montreal with McGill winning in 1994 and Université Laval, from Quebec City, winning the next year.

As there were other regional baseball leagues going on at the same time in Nova Scotia and British Columbia, these other leagues joined the CIBA in 1996, which expanded to four conferences (Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario East and Ontario West), featuring 21 teams competing in a 16-game schedule with playoffs. Teams in western Canada fall outside this structure, in large part due to costs, and there is no true national championship as a result.

For the 2014, the association changed its name to the Canadian Collegiate Baseball Association (CCBA). Today baseball is played at the varsity level with nearly 30 teams competing. The CCBA runs three conferences spread over 4 provinces. The league is student-organized and includes teams from Canadian universities and colleges. The association closed in 2019. The 2019 tournament was called the "Canadian University National Invitational Baseball Tournament"

Conferences[edit]

Teams in the Atlantic Conference were from schools in Halifax, Sydney, Fredericton, Moncton and Antigonish.

Teams in the Northern Conference included three from Montreal, two from Ottawa and one from Trois-Rivieres.

Teams in the Ontario Conference came from Kingston, Toronto, Oshawa and Windsor.

Championship series[edit]

The teams from all three conferences also were ranked at the National Level, against all other teams in the CIBA. The championship was played in a series consisting of two pools, with the top four teams advancing to the playoffs, where the first place team played the fourth place, and the second and third place teams meet in the semi-finals. One pool consisted of the champions from each of the Atlantic, Northern and Ontario conferences, the other pool consisted of the host team, and two wildcard teams.

Champions[edit]


Sources: CIBA website, [1] University of Ottawa Gee-Gees website [2] McMaster University website [3] McGill University website [4] Baseball Canada [5]

Further Reading[edit]

  • George S. Rigakos and Mitchell Thompson: "Testing an RPI Ranking System for Canadian University Baseball", in Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 48 Number 2, Fall 2019, pp. 16-23.