CEBL Canadian Elite Basketball League

Weekly Sports League and Franchise Report

by Dan Krieger
June 12, 2023 - Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL)


BASEBALL

Appalachian League: The summer-collegiate Appalachian League, which operates under the Major League Baseball and USA Baseball Prospect Development Pipeline, started its 2023 season this week with the same ten teams as last season and again aligned in the same five-team East and West divisions. Teams are located in Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia and will play a 48-game schedule through July.

American Association: The Lincoln (NE) Saltdogs of the independent American Association announced the team will play a game on June 30, 2023 as the Lincoln Swiftdogs as part of an in-game promotion to give away two separate pairs of tickets to an upcoming Taylor Swift concert in Kansas City.

Empire Baseball League: The independent developmental Empire League, which claims to be "The Nation's Premier Professional Baseball Showcase Organization," started its 2023 season this week with five teams each playing a 32-game schedule through July 18. All four of last season's teams called the Plattsburgh (NY) Thunderbirds, Tupper Lake (NY) Riverpigs, Saranac Lake (NY) Surge and the Japan Islanders travel-only team have returned, and a new team called the Malone (NY) Border Hounds was added for the 2023 season.

West Coast League: The summer-collegiate WCL started its 2023 season last week with the same 16 teams as last season and again aligned in eight-team North and South divisions. The WCL includes five teams in British Columbia (Canada), one in Alberta (Canada), four in Oregon and six in Washington. Each team will play a 54-game schedule from early June to early August 2023.

Coastal Plain League: The summer-collegiate CPL recently started its 2023 season and again has 14 teams aligned in seven-team East and West divisions. There was only one change from last season with the Savannah Bananas leaving the league to concentrate on the professional barnstorming and exhibition team by the same name. Savannah was replaced in the West Division by a team called the Boone (NC) Bigfoots.

Futures Collegiate Baseball League of New England: The summer-collegiate Futures League started its 2023 season late last month with the same eight teams as last season and aligned in a single-table format.

Prospect League: The summer-collegiate Prospect League recently started its 2023 season with 17 teams aligned in an Eastern Conference with a four-team Ohio Valley Division and a four-team Wabash River Division, and a Western Conference with a four-team Great River Division and a five-team Prairie Land Division. The league operated with 16 teams in 2022, but the West Virginia Miners are sitting out and new teams called the Jackson (TN) Rockabillys and Thrillville Thrillbillies (Marion, IL) were added for 2023.

BASKETBALL

Basketball Super League: The team called the Academie Alma (Quebec), or Alma Academy, which just completed its first season in the semi-pro The Basketball League (TBL), announced it has changed to the Pionniers de Quebec, or Quebec Pioneers, and will become a professional team based in Quebec City as part of the new professional BSL that will start play in late December of this year. So far, the BSL has announced four other teams all based in Canada-the Ontario-based London Lightning, Sudbury Five and K-W Titans (Kitchener-Waterloo) from the National Basketball League of Canada, and the Newfoundland Rogues (St. John's) team that was part of the 2023 TBL season. The BSL plans to start with 10 to 12 teams based in the United States and Canada.

Canadian Elite Basketball League: The ten-team minor professional CEBL announced the top players from its current spring-summer season will hold an East vs. West game called the CEBL Clash in Quebec City on August 29, 2023, after the regular season and playoffs. The league confirmed it is in serious talks about bringing an expansion team to the Videotron Centre in Quebec City for the 2024 season.

National Basketball Association Gatorade League (G-League): The NBA G-League held a player draft this week to stock the new yet-to-be-named Portland (OR) expansion team that will start play in the 2023-24 season. The team will be owned and operated by the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers and play home games on the University of Portland campus in North Portland.

FOOTBALL

Canadian Football League: The CFL started its 2023 season this week with the same nine teams as last season and again aligned in a five-team West Division and a four-team East Division. Each team will play an 18-game schedule through October 28, 2023. The league has been trying to add a fifth East Division team in Atlantic Canada and rights were awarded in 2018 to a group in Halifax (Nova Scotia) for a team to be called the Atlantic Schooners. This group pulled out due to delays caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and a lack of public funding towards a proposed new stadium. The CFL is still interested the Halifax market but stated if an ownership group does not step up, the league could consider expansion outside Atlantic Canada with Quebec City mentioned as a possibility.

HOCKEY

National Collegiate Development Conference: The junior-level United States Premier Hockey League's Tier-II NCDC has posted the 2023-24 alignment as the league grows from 14 teams in seven-team North and South divisions to 18 teams in six-team North, South and West divisions. The Boston Advantage and New Hampshire Junior Monarchs (Hooksett) will not return in the North, so the Utica (NY) Junior Comets were moved from the South to the North. The new West division features six teams moving up a level to the NCDC from the 2022-23 USPHL Tier-III Premier Conference. These include the Idaho Falls (ID) Spuds, Ogden (UT) Mustangs, Provo (UT) Predators, Pueblo (CO) Bulls and Utah Outliers (West Valley) from the USPHL Premier Mountain Division, and the Rock Springs (WY) Grizzlies (formerly the Prospectors) from the USPHL Premier Northwest Division.

United States Hockey League: The Midwest-based Tier-I junior-level USHL, which is the highest-level junior hockey league in the United States, announced its 2023-24 season schedule that will feature the same 16 teams from last season and again aligned in eight-team Eastern and Western conferences. Each team will play a 62-game schedule from September 29, 2023 through April 13, 2024.

United States Premier Hockey League: The Elmira (NY) Junior Enforcers, which operates teams in both the Premier Conference and the Elite Conference of the junior-level Tier-III USPHL, has changed the name of both teams to the Elmira Impact ahead of the 2023-24 season.

SOCCER

Major League Indoor Soccer: The men's professional MLIS, which completed its inaugural 2022-23 season in March with 12 teams, announced it will add developmental leagues called MLIS2 and MLIS3 and implement promotion and relegation between leagues in the future. The MLIS is looking to bring its development program in-house after several MLIS teams had developmental teams in the Premier Arena Soccer League last season. Next season, all MLIS teams are expected to have MLIS2 development teams.

USL League One (United Soccer League): The Division-III professional USL League One announced an ownership group in Brooklyn (NY) has been awarded an expansion franchise with a team expected to start play in the 2025 season. The new Brooklyn team will announce a name in the coming weeks.

United Women's Soccer: The national pro-am UWS and its lower-level UWS League Two (UWS2) started their 2023 seasons last month. The pro-am UWS has 39 teams aligned in East (17 teams), Southwest (4 teams), West (5 teams) and Central (13 teams) conferences. The Central Conference is further aligned in an eight-team Great Lakes Division and a five-team Midwest Division. The UWS2 has 25 teams across five conferences. The UWS season runs through mid-July.

Liga MX: The top Mexican men's pro soccer league known as Liga MX announced the 2023 Apertura (opening) phase of its two-part 2023-24 Apertura/Clausura season will start on June 30 with the same 18 teams that were part of the 2023 Clausura (closing) phase of the 2022-23 season. Each team will play 17 games through November 12, 2023.

OTHER

National Lacrosse League: The indoor professional NLL's Toronto Rock team, which is based out of the FirstOntario Centre in Hamilton (Ontario), announced it will play the December home games of the 2023-24 season in Hamilton and move to the 5,000-seat Paramount Fine Foods Centre in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga for the remainder of the 2023-24 season and the entire 2024-25 season. Renovations on the FirstOntario Centre are supposed to start in January 2024 and take 20 months to complete.

Dan Krieger is the creator of the Weekly Sports League & Franchise Report, which has been tracking changes in the sports world's leagues, teams and nicknames since April 2007.



Canadian Elite Basketball League Stories from June 12, 2023


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