Tyson Taylor
sports@pqbnews.com
Heading into his third season as a UBC Thunderbird, Kevin Biro, 20 years old from Deep Bay, is looking to improve both on team and personal levels this year.
The former Parksville Royal’s standout was home over the holidays and shared some of his thoughts and expectations for both the Thunderbirds and himself for the upcoming 2014 season.
Biro, entering his third year at UBC, has been looking forward to getting back to the Lower Mainland to start training in the first week of January.
“We’ll start getting back into it right away, do some throwing inside and practicing outdoors. Basically starting up two–a–days with weight training on top of that. Then we’re off to Lewiston, Idaho for a tournament and then a ten day trip down to California,” Biro said.
According to his head coach, this will also be a year that Biro will assume a bigger role within the team, being one of the older players now on the squad.
“It’s a role that I’m going to be comfortable with and I’m not surprised that I’m going to have to take either. I’m excited though, we’ve got a good team heading into this year.”
During the summer last year, Biro and four other T-Birds took their games to Melville, Saskatchewan to join the Melville Millionaires of the Western Major Baseball League. Biro was the lead off batter, something he’s not used to, and managed a .366 batting average over the season.
“I never really expected that I was going to be batting lead off. The coach put me in there and I asked him if he was sure he knew what he was doing, but he just laughed and it turned out to work pretty well for us. It’s the first time I’ve ever been lead off in my career so it was different.”
The Millionaires ended up making a run out of their season all the way into the playoffs, making it to the finals and wound up taking the WMBL Championship on their home turf.
“It was great. Melville is a great community and they’re really big on hockey there, so to have the support that we did with the team we had, it was a lot of fun. It was nice to experience it together.”
Personally, Biro is expecting some bigger things out of himself once the season starts up again for UBC. With a .281 batting average, three home runs and 27 RBI last year, there’s room for improvement according to the Deep Bay product.
“I’d like to shoot to become an All–American. Those are sort of the expectations put on me; with what I’ve been able to do so far I should be able to accomplish that. From a team standpoint, we just need to get past the first round of the playoffs this year. I hope to be able to step up and fill that leadership role that’s been put on me.”