The Saskatchewan Major Baseball League's Weyburn Beavers are already waiting for next year.

The team will be taking a one-year leave of absence from the SMBL because of an inability to find a qualified coach and a roster of players in time for the upcoming 2000 season.

The Beavers were trying to secure a coach and players late in the recruiting season, but with training camps set to open in a few weeks, nearly all potential candidates had committed to other teams.

"Our first goal is to find a qualified coach for next year, who has connections to the colleges," said club president Lawrence Woodard. "We are keeping our local players in mind, but we can also find players through the colleges."

One factor in the Beavers' inability to find players was because many of them have been with the club since its inception.

"Many have moved on to find jobs where they can't commit an entire summer to playing baseball," Woodard said. "So we are in a rebuilding stage now."

After the Beavers find a manager to coach the team, the Beavers will spend the fall season looking for new baseball players to come to Weyburn to play in the 2001 season. Woodard said it is important to have players signed and committed by the Christmas break.

To assist in the recruitment efforts, the Beavers have enlisted Ray Beck of Lang and Mel Siever of Estevan. Both have experience in finding baseball talent.

"The Senior Beavers were a stepping stone for players with the Midget Beavers program," said Woodard.

With the Weyburn Beavers taking a year off, a second problem was created. Weyburn has one of the automatic berths to this year's Canadian Senior A baseball championships in British Columbia. Without a team to send, it is not yet known which team will replace the Beavers' entry in the championships.

"It's possible we can put a team together, but it will be pretty expensive to send a team to British Columbia for nationals," said Woodard.

Woodard added the Beavers have bolstered their lineup for the national tournament with players from other Saskatchewan teams before. But in those cases, they were supplementing an existing roster, not creating a roster from scratch.

Woodard also said finding exhibition games for the team to play in and fund-raising so the team can actually attend the national championship are barriers to this idea.

The Beavers executive has instead suggested to the SMBL that last year's league champion attend the championships in their place. The league has not yet responded to the Beavers' suggestion.

"I feel badly for the fans," said Woodard. "They were good supporters of the team. We want to bring them back to the park next year."