Playing baseball almost two thousand kilometres away from family and home has required some adjusting for 19 year-old infielder Gavin Roy.

Get him closer to home base, however, and the talented product of the Sudbury Voyageurs’ system is more than comfortable, very much in his element.

So while following up his freshman year as a student athlete with the Cloud County Community College Thunderbirds in Concordia (Kansas) with a full summer spent with the Kingman Islanders of the Sunflower Collegiate League (Kingman, Kansas) might be cause for more than a little homesickness, the gains should well be worth the pains.

“It’s always been a goal to experience baseball in the States,” said Roy, who hit for an average of .337 with the T-Birds this year, leading the team in runs (55), triples (5) and hit by pitch (17), second in on-base percentage (.468) and third in hits (55). “I’ll take two years and see what it’s like. If it’s not for me, I can always come home. I am still super young.”

In the meantime, however, he wants to give himself every chance possible to obtain an NCAA Division I scholarship based on both his performance at his current JUCO (junior college), as well as with the summer ball team that he recently represented in the league all-star game.

Where some are overwhelmed with everything this experience can throw at them, Roy has adjusted well. “I think I was honestly really well prepared,” said the Health & Human Performance major who is hitting .293 and leads the Islanders in runs (21) and doubles (4) and is top three in hits (25), RBI (13), base on balls (13) and stolen bases (15).

“The program in Sudbury has grown a lot and Jean-Gilles (Larocque) knows what this is all about. A lot of the stuff that we are doing at Cloud is similar to the stuff that we do with the Voyageurs.”

A slow start to the 2022-2023 season at Cloud County did not deter the prospect who prides himself on very strong defensive play to complement his work at the plate, with Roy really starting to settle in once his first ten or fifteen at bats were behind him.

“I knew that I had to stick with it, to keep showing up at practice and doing all of the little things right,” he said. “I just tried to be that guy the coach could not take out of the lineup. Even if it’s not going 3/3 every game, I am stealing a base, taking an extra base, doing the little things. Over time, I gained more trust with coach and started playing every game.”

Where he started the year hitting down in the order, seventh or so in the limited fall schedule, spring time would see Roy make the leap to second hitter, even spending some time in the leadoff spot late as a teammate dealt with an injury.

“I like hitting leadoff, trying to set the tone for the game – but when you are hitting second, I find that you see a lot of fastballs, especially if the leadoff guy is on base,” said Roy. That would be critical as the graduate of E.S.C l’Horizon / St Charles College refined the mindset that would accompany him as he stepped into the batter’s box this year.

“The thing that helped me the most was my approach at the plate,” said Roy. “I think that’s a really big thing. If there are no strikes, I am always looking fastball. Curveball is not even in the equation. Once it gets to two strikes, that’s when you start to protect the plate and try and hit any pitch.”

“It’s more structured than what I am used to,” Roy added. “Back home, I was kind of seeing if it’s a good pitch and swinging. I found I was swinging at a lot better pitches this year. You learn to hunt that one pitch and once there’s two strikes, that’s when you need to battle.”

Defensively, the long-time shortstop benefitted from a varied resume in terms of his positional play as a youngster in Sudbury, his flexibility coming in handy as he spent time at both second and third base, in addition to shortstop, with the Thunderbirds.

“I feel pretty comfortable at all three, but it took me a bit of time to adjust to being a third baseman,” Roy confessed. “The balls are hit at you harder, there is less time to react. At shortstop, you’ve got time to set your feet and throw. Second and short I am most familiar with.”

Spending the summer in a league with U.S. collegiate talent that will return to outposts from one coast to the other once school reconvenes in late August, Roy is hopeful that one more really solid season at Cloud will open the door to an NCAA Division I opportunity, looking to add a little more consistency to a year that offered both good and bad.

“We went through a couple of struggles this year, but overall, I thought we had a good year,” said Roy, the T-Birds finishing with a record of 37-23. “We won a lot of ball games but disappointed at the end of the year tournament at Wichita State. That didn’t go the way we wanted it to go.”

“But I got some good experience for the upcoming year” – not to mention a chance to play a whole lot of baseball in the land that lives and breathes for the sport.