FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                            Contact: Chuck Paiva

February 12, 2019                                                                               President & General Manager

                                                                                      401-845-6832// gm@newportgulls.com

2019 Schedule Released 

The Upcoming Summer’s Schedule is Official

Newport, R.I. –Commissioner Sean McGrath announced the New England Collegiate Baseball League’s (NECBL) 2019 composite schedule. The New England League celebrates its 25th anniversary season on Wednesday, June 5, when the Gulls host the Mystic Schooners at Cardines Field, as part of a full six-game Opening Day slate.

The 2019 season will once again feature seven teams in the North Division and six teams in the South Division. The North Division remain the same, comprised of the Keene Swamp Bats, the North Adams SteepleCats, the Sanford Mainers, the Upper Valley Nighthawks, the Valley Blue Sox, the Vermont Mountaineers, and the Winnepsaukee Muskrats. The six-team South Division welcomes the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks and contains the Danbury Westerners, Mystic Schooners, the New Bedford Bay Sox, and the Ocean State Waves, in addition to your Newport Gulls.

The New England League will employ a balanced/unbalanced schedule format depending on the division, and all teams will play 44 regular season games overall. Teams in the South Division will face each divisional rival six times (three home and three road games) and will play each team from the North Division twice (one home, one road). Each team in the North Division will play two other in-division teams six times, and the remaining four teams five times, for a total of 32 games, plus the two games against each of the six South Division teams (12 games – one home, one road vs. each team) for a total of 44 games.

The Vermont Mountaineers will play host to the 2019 NECBL All-Star Game on Sunday, July 28, 2019, at Montpelier Recreation Field in Montpelier, Vermont, marking the third time the Mountaineers have hosted the NECBL All-Star Game (2004 & 2012.). After that, each of the league’s 13 teams will play two final days of the regular season with hopes of qualifying for the 2019 NECBL Playoffs, of which the format remains the same from last summer.

Six teams total will qualify for the postseason, with the winners of both the North and South Divisions each earning first-round byes. The No. 2 and No. 3 seeds from each division will square off in a winner-take-all NECBL Wildcard Game; the victors will take on the No. 1 seeds in the best-of-three NECBL Divisional Finals before the last two teams standing face off in the NECBL Championship Series in another best-of-three format that will determine the winner of the Fay Vincent Cup.

The final games of the regular season will be held on Thursday, Aug. 1, with the following day (Aug. 2) open for makeup games before the postseason begins on Saturday, Aug. 3.

A Press Release discussing the Newport Gulls Promotional Schedule and Special Events will be released soon. 

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The Newport Gulls, members of the 13-team New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL), are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded as the Rhode Island Gulls in 1998 in Cranston, R.I., before moving to Newport in 2001. In addition to recruiting, fielding, and developing a team of the nation’s top collegiate baseball athletes and attracting 50,000 fans annually to Cardines Field, the predominantly volunteer organization strives to benefit the community of Newport County via summer camps, reading programs, fundraisers, scholarships, and charitable donations – totaling over $1 million since 2001. The Gulls are six-time champions of the NECBL – the winningest franchise in league history – and were ranked as the overall No. 1 summer collegiate baseball team in the country by Perfect Game USA in 2012.

For more information about the Newport Gulls, visit facebook.com/newportgulls, follow the Gulls on Twitter @NewportGulls or visit www.newportgulls.com.

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