Wilson: Oyen’s 1995 championship squad to be celebrated at WCBL’s first Rural Roots Baseball Classic

In 1995, the Oyen Pronghorns became the only Alberta team to win a Saskatchewan Major Baseball League championship.

*This article was originally published on the Western Canadian Baseball League website on June 6. You can read it here.

June 8, 2025

By Ian Wilson

Western Canadian Baseball League

When they galloped onto Saskatchewan's baseball scene, you did not want to lock horns with Oyen.

The Pronghorns, the lone Alberta representative in the Saskatchewan Major Baseball League (SMBL), joined the six-team circuit in 1993 and came ready to play.

Doug Lehman - who now has a ball diamond named after him in Oyen - and Doug Jones, who is currently the mayor of the town, were among those who helped give the team its start in the SMBL.

Their first year, they had a 25-game schedule that included 12 home dates in June and July.

The uniforms were white, with black, grey and teal blue trim.

Jones was the Oyen Minor Ball president at the time and part of his recruitment strategy involved surveying talent in Medicine Hat and consulting National Baseball Institute (NBI) players who took part in an exhibition game against the Toronto Blue Jays in Regina in 1993.

Their first SMBL games came in the form of a doubleheader against Moose Jaw on June 6.

Just two seasons after playing in those first games, the Oyen Pronghorns were league champions. Their title helped set the SMBL on a course to what would later become the 12-team Western Canadian Baseball League (WCBL), which took baseball to new levels in both Alberta and Saskatchewan. That team also produced its own share of trailblazers and vital builders of the game.

On the field the squad was formidable. In 1995, they had an overall record of 29-7 and in the SMBL that year the Pronghorns were 18-6. They racked up lopsided wins over Swift Current, Kindersley and Moose Jaw, while also coming out on top in games against Weyburn with regularity.

"The memories I recall were how close-knit our team was," said Todd Hubka, one of several Alberta products on the roster.

"The team could hit, one through nine. We never felt we were out of any game. It was a lot of fun on and off the field."

Rocke Musgraves was the head coach of the Pronghorns. He went on to be a longtime coach with the Louisiana State University - Shreveport program, as well as a skipper at Northwest Nazarene University. More recently, he was named the 2025 New South Athletic Conference (NSAC) Coach of the Year for his work at John Melvin University.

Musgraves was joined in Oyen by pitching coach Robert Gonzales and player/coach Ched Simmons.

"The guys were well disciplined at all times," said Simmons in a newspaper report following the championship victory.

"Musgraves and Gonzales were awesome coaches."

Simmons - who ended up taking the mound after the innings piled up for the bullpen by the end of the 1995 season - said the Pronghorns had both a lethal offence and solid pitching. Oyen won by an average of six runs per game that summer.

"You know your team has good batting when you score as many runs a game as we did," said Simmons.

"They guys were tired, that's why they asked me to help out. But when everyone was rested we had a great bunch of pitchers."

THE TEAM

Their starting rotation included a number of pitchers from California, including Dave Hernandez, Jeff Dufek, and Tim Vititoe.

Dallas Anderson was a 6-foot-4 right-hander from Kindersley, Sask., who was a 33rd round selection of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the 1996 Major League Baseball (MLB) Draft. He went pro and worked out of the bullpen for the Lethbridge Black Diamonds of the rookie-level Pioneer League for two seasons.

Alberta players included catcher Josh Nowlin, first baseman Graham Schetzsle, shortstop Bill Wolstenholme, middle infielder Brad Molcak, infielder Pacer Wilson, outfielder Tom Rodzinyak, local product Aaron Anderson and Hubka, who played in the outfield and pitched when needed.

Molcak was a righty batter from Cardston who was taken by the Colorado Rockies in the 48th round of the MLB Draft in 1993.

When he was done playing for Oyen, Wilson went to Saskatchewan to play independent league baseball for the Moose Jaw Diamond Dogs of the Prairie League in 1997.

Both Rodzinyak and Hubka went on to have lengthy coaching careers in Alberta.

Rodzinyak coached with the Vauxhall Spurs American Legion program, assisted with the Lethbridge Bulls of the Western Major Baseball League (WMBL), and he has been involved with Red Deer Minor Baseball since 2013.

Hubka is a member of the Prairie Baseball Academy (PBA) Hall of Fame and has been the head coach of that Lethbridge-based program since 2010.

Schetzsle - the founder and manager of Dryland Cattle Trading Corporation - went on to establish the Sylvan Lake Gulls, a WCBL franchise that has been in operation since 2021. He and his wife, Jen Schetzsle, are both founders and chief executive officers of the team. Also a part of the front office is Aqil Samuel, who is the president and chief operating officer. Samuel played for the Oyen Pronghorns in 1994.

“It was a long time ago, but I remember we were not a deep team, by any means. I think we only had 13 or 14 players, but all really quality players," said Schetzsle of the championship Pronghorns club.

"Today’s rosters in the WCBL are comprised of usually thirty players, so it’s remarkable to think of the difference between 1995 and 2025. We, of course, only played 35 to 40 games total, back then, not the 60-plus games that are required to win today’s WCBL."

SEASON HIGHLIGHTS

In addition to hoisting the Harry Hallis Memorial Trophy as league champs, there were other elements of intrigue for the Pronghorns in the SMBL in the summer of 1995.

Ila Borders, the first woman to pitch in men's college baseball in the United States, signed on to play with the defending champion Swift Current Indians that season.

"We're giving her an opportunity based on her ability," said Swift Current's playing assistant coach Steve Riley in an April interview with the Regina Leader-Post newspaper.

"She obviously has talent, and she's been able to persevere through a tough situation to get to her second season in college."

Added Riley: "We want her to give us an opportunity to win, the same thing we ask of all our pitchers."

Borders - who had done interviews with Sports Illustrated, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and CNN - was just excited to get some innings of work in during the summer.

"I thought it was a good way to get more experience," she told the Leader-Post.

"For any baseball player that's their goal to play in the majors or the best division that they can ... that's my goal. I try to take it day by day and see what happens."

Borders faced the Pronghorns during Oyen's June 11 home opener, and the Pronghorns hitters got to her early and often in handing her a loss.

The southpaw was a media sensation but she also surrendered a lot of runs during her time on the mound in Saskatchewan.

Borders, who went on to play four professional seasons of men's baseball and become one of the first women to record a pro win, looked back on her time in Swift Current as a positive experience.

"I don’t think it was just baseball that I was learning so much, but it was being out of my comfort zone, being in Canada. I still have such fond memories of Swift Current," she said in a 2020 interview.

“I think out there was more what it was was people were more intrigued or they were like ‘Holy crud there’s a female out here, I want to go see this.’ More people were out there because they were curious and they just wanted to see it … I think I had some support. My teammates I got along with great. They were extremely supportive.”

For the Pronghorns, they were going to score runs no matter who was on the mound.

The only exception in 1995 came when a future MLB pitcher took the bump against Oyen.

Canada's national baseball team squared off against the Pronghorns in a July 23 exhibition game at Henderson Stadium in Lethbridge to raise funds for the PBA.

Team Canada was preparing to take part in pre-Olympic qualifying tournament in Edmonton in early August.

Dave Hernandez, a 12th-round pick of the Montreal Expos, got the start for the Pronghorns and retired 16 straight Canada batters after he allowed a walk in the first inning.

Hernandez went the distance and allowed three runs, but his opponent - Carseland's Jeff Zimmerman - also turned in a complete game and didn't give up any runs in the process. The result was a 3-0 win for Canada, the first and only shutout Oyen experienced all year.

"This was a great experience," Hernandez told the Lethbridge Herald.

"Our whole team was pumped for this. I'm not disappointed at all. Our team played well."

Zimmerman ended up playing three MLB seasons with the Texas Rangers between 1999 and 2001. The closer collected 32 big-league saves and recorded 213 strikeouts and a 3.27 earned run average over 228-plus innings.

"What I remember about Zimmerman was not his fastball, but his slider was electric. It was a great game. I think we gave them too much credit at the start of the game thinking we just didn’t want to embarrass ourselves when in fact, a couple of bounces and we probably could’ve won that game," recalled Hubka.

The Pronghorns closed out the campaign with three consecutive victories over Swift Current. That sealed a title for Oyen and made the Pronghorns the first and only team from Alberta to claim a Saskatchewan Major Baseball League championship. Oyen outscored Swift Current 29 to 17 over those three games.

"I do remember going into the playoffs feeling like we knew we were going to win. We were just better than everybody. That summer was a lot of fun," said Hubka.

Schetzsle remembers experiencing the same sense of confidence.

"The Oyen community was all in, for every playoff run," he said.

"That year, of course, was extra special, as I think everyone had a sense that was a team that could win the championship."

LASTING LEGACY

The title win planted the seeds for a whole new league and provided a path for Alberta and Saskatchewan to join forces while competing for baseball supremacy on the prairies.

The Pronghorns didn't last beyond 1997 in Oyen, a community of 900 people, but Lethbridge picked up where they left off when the Bulls joined the SMBL in 1999. Hubka was the first head coach for that organization.

Soon after Lethbridge entered the SMBL it was transformed into the Western Major Baseball League and in 2018 it was rebranded as the Western Canadian Baseball League. Through the achievements of the Pronghorns and the Bulls, more Alberta teams joined the circuit. The Medicine Hat Mavericks, Okotoks Dawgs, Brooks Bombers, Fort McMurray Giants, Sylvan Lake Gulls and Spruce Grove-based Energy City Cactus Rats now compete against their WCBL opponents from Saskatchewan.

The baseball roots of the WCBL also remain in Oyen. Mayor Doug Jones was a co-founder of the Prairie Baseball Academy that now feeds several players to the Lethbridge Bulls each summer. Jones, a former president of the WMBL and member of the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame, also established Badlands Baseball Academy in Oyen. That program is led by head coach Nolan Rattai, who played several seasons in with the Medicine Hat Mavericks and won a WMBL championship with the club in 2018.

It's an exceptional area for many people who are involved in the WCBL.

"The four summers I spent in Oyen were special to me, and still are. I have lifetime friends and relationships in the Oyen area because of my time with the Oyen Pronghorns," said Schetzsle.

The relationship between the WCBL and Oyen will be honoured on Sunday when the Sylvan Lake Gulls take on the Lethbridge Bulls as part of the Rural Roots Baseball Classic at Doug Lehman Field. The regular season matchup will mark the culmination of a 30th anniversary celebration of the Oyen Pronghorns 1995 championship victory. The weekend will include a reunion of former players, a golf tournament and a youth baseball camp.

"We're very excited. It's going to be the first Rural Roots game and we're going back into history with this. We're going to have a great weekend," said Jones.