(Canadian) American playing for a Canadian University?

@JohnnySakko

So, I did a quick search (magnifying glass on the title bar), and didn't come up with much.  You've got your work cut out for you as it seems most Canadian college folks want to play in the US.   Maybe this works to his advantage.  From the articles I read it seems college is significantly less expensive in Canada, and there are some great educational options.

You mentioned your high school and travel coach in your post.  Honestly, I think that is the best place to start.  They should be somewhat familiar with how it works, and the pros and cons of Canadian college baseball.  If they've been doing this for some time they should know the right people, and willing to help out.  After all, that is part of what a travel coach should be doing.

Tell your son to keep up the hard work, and please let us know what you find out.   Good luck!

Thank you for taking the time to reply, Fenway! Yes, even when I search here, which seems to be one of the best sources for recruiting anywhere on the web, there is little about U.S. players wanting to go to Canada. As a family who knows the challenges of baseball in the Northeast (indoor drills all Winter and snow on Opening Day!), we know not that families are looking to go even further North! But as you pointed out, there are some great schools in Canada. An interesting note is that I recently learned that his high school coach played in the CanAm (now Frontier League) for a stint, so we will pick his brain too. This week is HS tryout week, so will find shortly afterwards to bug him for suggestions.

How about your son emailing some Canadian college baseball programs, explain the situation and ask how the process works? He might create some interest just from his email.

The email should go directly to the coach. Follow up with a phone call if the coach doesn’t respond within a determined period of time.

Most of these are in the east (5 best programs 2021)…

https://www.fishstripes.com/22...l-colleges-in-canada

Here’s Guelph’s schedule. It will provide an idea of what colleges have teams. They played 32 games … in the fall.

https://gryphons.ca/sports/baseball/schedule

Thank you for the reply, RJM! He is getting a sense of which schools he wants to target and will start his outreach soon. Just wanted to get a sense of basics of the process first. It's interesting to see that a number of the schools seem to hold on-campus open tryouts before their seasons begin.

You may have to pay to be on the team ….

https://www.prsvre.com/articles/unspokenrealities

This article is a few years old. It seems like Canadian college baseball is more like club ball. In some cases the players don’t even attend the college.

https://curavensbaseball.com/a...-baseball-in-canada/

On summer ball teams in Canada, there are some players from Canadian schools, which are otherwise mostly US-based players.

I looked it up.  UBC plays mostly US-based teams (in the NAIA?); other Canadian college teams play each other . . . in the fall.

You might also look at the rosters of some of the Canadian schools' teams, to see how many Americans they have (UBC, for example, has very few; McGill has 7 right now).

A poster on this site used to post quite a bit about Canadian schools, see:

https://community.hsbaseballwe...49#50431994820614449

https://community.hsbaseballwe...12#51981607546043412

Thank you for sharing those threads, AP! I had not come across them before, and they are chock full of interesting and useful information. Good advice on checking the rosters. We have been monitoring them (and comparing them to D3 rosters) and have noted the ones that have more American students; also heartened by the fact that they tend to have more student athletes his size (as mentioned, my son is undersized, so he has been working hard on gaining weight and strength). I have noticed before that one of the schools actually recruits from our area and even has someone on the current roster who played for my son's previous travel team.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to give feedback. I was able to contact a person in our area who went to play college baseball in Canada. He confirmed that the recruiting timeline was similar to D3 schools in the United States, and he was able to answer some other questions. (Juniors making outreach to try and win commitments by senior year.) Now we need to have good Spring and Summer seasons. Wish us luck! And good luck to all your favorite teams this season! Will keep you posted on our journey.