Spending a summer in school at Wilfrid Laurier University can put a damper on some of our plans, however there are plenty of things summer students can do to enjoy the great weather.
A long-standing tradition of Laurier business and administration students in the summer has been major league summer baseball, also referred to as MLSB.
Many students, however, don’t know what it is.
“It began in 1992, when a group of business co-op students were looking for something to do in the summer,” said Sarah Dibblee.
Dibblee, a third-year student, is a first time participant in the Laurier tradition.
“However, I am positive that I will return to the league for my fourth-year,” she said.
Although heavily based here at Laurier, MLSB is surprisingly not associated with the university. It acts as a separate entity operating through community sponsors and enlists a number of coordinators to tackle the logistics, many of which are Laurier students.
Despite many business students participating, realistically, anyone can join. Sundy Zheng, a captain for one of this season’s teams, explained that third-year business students are assigned to teams based on their summer core classes, each making up two teams each, while fourth-year students have the choice of their own.
Students from other faculties have also made their own teams in previous years and even members of surrounding post-secondary institutions have participated.
In a way, MLSB is as Laurier as it gets: fostering community through student leadership.
Zheng mentioned that the league is further divided into two groups: one, which plays Mondays and Wednesdays and the other on Tuesdays and Thursdays with games being played at Waterloo Park.
At times, MLSB can feel like a semester long O-Week, with the teams’ coordinated t-shirts and all the activities planned.
“With games twice a week and exciting events through the weekend, there is never a dull moment,” says Dibblee.
Organizers plan weekend events, a Beerfest, an all-star tournament, a rafting excursion in mid-summer and their very own pub-crawl. To top things off, MLSB hosts their own, self-explanatory, Summerween.
MLSB provides students with a very unique way of meeting everyone in your classes and it’s unfortunate, there isn’t a similar engaging activity during fall or winter semester.
MSLB is proof that Waterloo definitely is not a ghost town during the summer semester.