alumni

January 7, 2009
Hello Alumni and friends of the Dawgs,

With 2009 now upon us I plan to get our PBA Alumni up and active. I have taken over for Denny Puszkar, who has stepped down as the PBA alumni Rep. Denny has done an excellent job over the past few years and has laid a solid foundation for us to work with. Denny will now be his team year rep for 1996. Denny's life is very busy and his family is ever growing but knowing Denny he'll always be right around the corner.

As for myself, I played in 1997-1998, and 1998-1999. We didn't have a lot of success on the field but off the field I made a lot of good lifetime friends with both my fellow players and my coaches. I attended Lethbridge Community College and finished with a diploma in General Studies. After my PBA career ended I was offered a scholarship with the Washington State University Cougars, where I went 0-1 with a strikeout...for the year. Not a great way to start out my college career. After WSU I transferred to the University of Iowa Hawkeyes for a year then back to WSU to finish off my degree in Sports Management. While attending WSU as a regular International student without a scholarship the tuition had rose over 14% - putting an end to my University education in the USA. I then transferred back home to the University of Lethbridge where I had to enroll in Kinesiology - since sports management wasn't offered at the U of L. I quit the U of L after 1 1/2 years and began working at the family feedlot with my Dad, and my brothers, Kevin and Craig. Currently I’m still involved in the family business. I work at Butte Grain Merchants in Picture Butte, AB. I just recently built a new house in the Sunridge area of West Lethbridge where I live with my girlfriend Kristin and our chihuahua Venice.

It seems that over the past few years our alumni has slowly diminished at any and all events that the PBA has hosted or been involved with. May it be the PBA golf Tourney, Alumni weekend, the annual PBA Banquet or even a weekend home stand at the yard, there seems to be a weak Alumni gathering at any and all events. Besides the fact that the local Lethbridge reps and some former out-of-towners that now call Lethbridge their home do attend these events is good, but we would like to see those former Dawgs that don't live in the area attend some of these get togethers once and while. I’m not sure what we have to do - maybe some input from you guys is what we need. What do we need to do to have a strong gathering of PBA alumni once a year, twice a year? I have some ideas to push and I hope that they get our alumni going in the right direction.

Here are some ideas that we would like to start on to build our PBA alumni:

  • To start a PBA Alumni Society
  • Monthly Alumni meetings at the yard
  • Yearly alumni reps, these reps would have the responsibility to look after there year and track down and gather info on guys that they played with over the past years. These reps would also have to attend our PBA alumni meetings and hopefully pass PBA info along to to their years players.
  • PBA Alumni Scholarship
  • Annual PBA Alumni Weekend, golfing, baseball and possibly a BBQ/Banquet
  • Stronger PBA alumni representation around the city(Operation Red nose, Lethbridge Little League)
  • PBA Alumni Newsletter, updating Alumni on current PBA events, players and all other happenings

These are just a few ideas and I hope that some of you will have some more.

On Saturday, January 24 the annual PBA awards and scholarship banquet will take place. I hope all of you will put out a good effort to attend. It's always a good time with good food and lots to drink. There is always a good showing of some past PBA at the banquet and we hope it;s stronger this year. There is also a silent auction and a live auction which usually has some good items up for bid. Hope to see you all out!

If any Alumni has any old college gear that they would like to donate for the silent auction please let us know!!! Anything such as hats, t-shirts, hoodies, uniforms, balls, bats, cleats, gloves. Anything will do as long as it's from our PBA alumni!! Please let me know before the weekend of January 24!

That’s all for now, as always if you have any questions or comments regarding the Alumni or even suggestions for the website, please feel free to contact me at pbaalumni@hotmail.com or kurtpaskal@hotmail.com.

Kurt Paskal, PBA Alumni, 1997-1999