If you are the average fan (and most players) and live east of the Mississippi River, when you talk about two year colleges the NJCAA is basically the only topic of discussion. But there is a community college athletic organization on the West Coast that gets over looked and shouldn’t - the NWAC (Northwest Athletic Conference).
There are no NJCAA teams on the West coast. California has the CCCAA (California Community College Athletic Association) and community colleges located in Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington and British Columbia are members of the NWAC (pronounced
“N” WAC) with Wyoming probably coming aboard in the fall of 2015.
We spoke with former NWAC Executive Director Dick McCain and with former NWAC SID (1987-2006) Rob Kelly.
So why is the NWAC so special? In 1992 the NCAA was “seriously” looking at changing to wood bats. When it looked as though they were going to make
that decision the NWAC move forward before the final decision was made.
The NWAC had pro-active coaches and feeling that wood bats were going to
be the bat – knew they had to get their order in to be prepared. So that year they decided to go to wood. As you know the NCAA ended up not going to wood.
The NWAC stayed with the wood bat after that first year because “Our players were getting raves from the scouts and the players preferred them” according to Mr. McCain. The players felt they were now playing real baseball. The scouts, not so much their averages, but just from performance. They could tell if a player could really hit and hit the “long ball”. Since the players and coaches loved it so much plus they received more attention from the scouts they decided after the 1993 season to stay with wood. Mr. McCain states “The longer we have stayed with the wood bat the more everyone has liked it.”
He continued, “As far as the pro
aspect of it, it works out really good for
the batters because our players don’t have a big adjustment going from aluminum to wood if they have the opportunity to go play and decide to go out and play pro ball. Scouts can actually see our players and how they hit with wood. When a scout sees a good batter hitting with aluminum, there is some speculation whether or not the player can make a successful transition to wood. There is a little different technique to hit with wood vs. aluminum.”
His comment is supported by an article written by Gary Brown in The NCAA News where he states:
The Baseball Observer - May 2015
38
The Gem of the Northwest
"The longer we have stayed with the wood bat the more everyone has liked it"
-Dick McCain