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Guelph's Kyle Kush wrapping up his NCAA baseball career

Infielder not sure if he'll return to Guelph Royals this summer

After finishing his U.S. university baseball eligibility with the Canisius College Golden Griffins in Buffalo later this spring, Guelph native Kyle Kush is uncertain whether he’ll be back with his hometown Guelph Royals for Intercounty Baseball League play this summer.

“I'm not really sure what I'm going to do right now,” the 24-year-old said in a video chat. “I have an internship with a sports agency, but then I'm also trying to extend my playing career so hopefully I get an opportunity to do so overseas. I'm working on that right now and that's the ultimate goal for me right now.”

An infielder, Kush played two seasons with the Royals, but struggled a little at the plate.

In 2019 he hit .238 with a homer and seven RBIs and last summer he hit .184 with seven RBIs and two stolen bases. Due to COVID, the league didn’t operate in 2020 and the Royals didn’t participate in the league in 2021.

Kush has had little in the way of struggles with Canisius where he’s in his fifth and final year of eligibility. He’s started 99 of the team’s 103 games the past three seasons and has five homers, 47 RBIs, five stolen bases and a .250 batting average. He’s also got a .960 fielding percentage.

“I've loved it here,” Kush said of his time at Canisius. “I didn't know, honestly, coming into Buffalo how I would like the city but I absolutely love the city. I love being in Buffalo for the fall and for the Bills’ games. And Canisius is a very, very tight-knit community so it's really easy to fall into that and become part of that community.”

Kush completed an undergrad in sports management with a minor in business and is in the sports administration masters program this school year. It’s usually a two-year program, but Kush is squeezing both years into a single year of studies.

“Generally speaking, the graduate students have a smaller course load because it's usually a two-year program,” he explained. “I'm doing it in just one year because I only have one year of (baseball) eligibility left so I wanted to complete the whole thing in one year so I didn't have to come back for a sixth year and not be able to play.”

That means he’s taking five courses this school year, same as the undergrad students.

One goal on the diamond is, of course, to improve season after season.

“I definitely feel like I've gotten better and I've definitely matured,” he said. “Once you first start playing there's some growing pains and some nerves and stuff you’ve got to get rid of. But at the end of the day, it's still baseball and it's still something I've been doing since I was four years old so you’ve just got to push that to the side because it's all stuff you've created in your head – pressure and all that kind of stuff."

One reason for Kush having more success in NCAA baseball than in the IBL could be the leagues’ varying approaches to the game. It’s full-time in the NCAA, not in the IBL.

“The biggest difference between the leagues I'd say is the IBL is a lot more laid back,” Kush said. “The competition has really grown in the IBL so the competition is good. I like that, but just on a on a day-to-day basis, it's different because obviously when I'm (at Canisius) we practise six days a week and we lift three days a week as a team so you’re just around the guys a lot more.

“I know it’s hard to do that in the IBL because a lot of the guys have full-time jobs so it's mostly just showing up to the field on game day, taking BP (batting practice) and then getting ready to go so I would just say the daily day-to-day stuff is the biggest difference.”

That Kush pursued baseball as an athletic endeavour at university might have been a surprise for some as he’d been a five-time all-star in District 10 high school basketball with the Guelph CVI Green Gaels, three times in the senior league and twice in the junior loop. He was the junior league’s most valuable player in the 2014-15 school year.

He accepted an invitation to the Tri-City elite 40 camp for basketball in 2014 and from that was offered a tryout for the Toronto-based Grassroots Elite Canada squad that has sent numerous players to NCAA squads.

“If I would have made that team, I would have stuck with basketball over baseball,” he said. “And that was the year before I played (baseball) for the Ontario Nationals, which was, I think when I was 16 years old.

“They thought I was a year younger than I actually was. So I was trying out for a team that didn't really need another player actually so it ended up not working out, the basketball thing but, you know, I'm kind of glad that it didn’t.”

During the season Kush talks baseball on a daily basis with his twin brother Jacob, who is a pitcher at Austin Peay University.

“I talk to him every day,” Kyle said. “I make it a point whenever he's pitching and he's been pitching on Sundays mostly so the first thing I'll do when I get on the bus after my game is I'll go check his game, his stats and what he did that day.

“We'll call each other a bunch throughout the week but definitely there on Sunday night or sometime on Monday and we'll just talk about the weekend.”

The two played on the same team right until they started their post-secondary school education.

“Just the whole dynamic of me and him going our separate ways was really weird for me because before that we had done absolutely everything together,” Kyle said. “I always say one of the weirdest things about coming to college here and him going to college elsewhere was that nobody knew I was a twin, but when I'm in Guelph it's always like ‘Kyle and Jacob’. It’s like it's always a package deal kind of thing so it was definitely weird and something I had to get used to being without him.”

But baseball was there.

“I don't know if there's just one thing that I like about baseball,” Kyle said. “Even though it's based on individual parts of the game, I love the team aspect of it. I love being around the guys. We have 40 guys on our roster and I love being around the guys every day and I just love going out there and competing.

“That's one of the biggest things of baseball for me. It's really competitive. You have to really push yourself, too, because it is a game of failure. You have to be able to take that in stride and not let it affect you. That's one of the challenges of baseball that I really enjoy.”