At 15, Powell River’s Austin Brown can throw a baseball 85 miles per hour. For the past two years he’s been the North Island Royals’ number one guy on the pitching mound. He’s highly respected by his coaches and deeply admired by his teammates. He’ll also be competing in the BC Summer Games this week, although nobody is likely to hear any of these things from him.
“He doesn’t really put it in your face,” said coach Ryan Chenard. “You wouldn’t be able to tell that on the team he’s the guy that everybody relies on to carry them.”
After an impressive performance at tryouts last month, Austin was selected for the Zone 6 (Vancouver Island) AAA baseball team, which will compete on Friday, July 18 and Saturday, July 19 for a spot in the playoffs. “He’s a super committed kid, awesome kid,” Chenard added. “Really happy-go-lucky, keeps up the team spirits and absolutely just deals on the mound.
“He’s a big kid and he throws really well so for the summer games he’s going to be one of our top two guys for the AAA team,” Chenard continued. “He’s definitely one of the top guys in the league.”
For the past three years, Austin has been making the trip from Powell River to Courtenay on weekends to practice and play with the Royals. It’s an arrangement that began in 2011 after Austin’s talents were discovered by another coach, Rob Green, at a local exhibition game.
“He saw Austin pitch and couldn’t believe the velocity that Austin already had,” explained his mother Jen. “A few weekends after that game in town here, we went over to Comox to play them over there. Rob was still really interested in Austin, and Austin went over there and shook his hand and told him that if he needed a pitcher for his team he’d be more than happy to play for him...Rob went back and asked his team how they felt about having Austin come over and they wanted him so bad so they took him.”
Joining a bantam team on Vancouver Island didn’t come without its logistical challenges, however. “He commits more than anybody else with the travel with the ferry and that kind of stuff,” said Chenard. “He’s usually away from home from Friday night to Sunday night maybe, Monday morning usually.”
For his mother, that often means missing some of his biggest moments. “I’m not used to just sending him over there and handing him off to other parents,” she said. “I want to be there and be the one driving them and picking up the kids, which is what I would do here, so it’s hard to send him over there every week.”
Once he turns 16, Austin will be old enough to try out for the Parksville Royals of BC Premier Baseball League. If he makes the team, Jen said the family would consider a permanent move to Vancouver Island.
In the meantime, the commute isn’t bothering Austin too much. His focus remains on playing the game he has loved since the age of five. “[Baseball is] so different from all of the other sports,” he explained. “I get so much joy from playing it and I try to put all my heart into it every day. I take out all my emotions on the game, so it’s pretty much my life.”
But that doesn’t mean he’s dropping the ball on his educational pursuits. “My goal for just right now is to do as good as I can in baseball but also not let baseball interfere with my school so that I can get onto a good college or university and head out to play for college baseball and see where I go from there,” he said.
