Yes and No. Baseball Alberta has residency rules in place that require players to register in their home Associations first, prior to making any transfer requests to outside Associations. It is up to the Associations to decide whether or not any transfer requests should be approved and, generally speaking, if an appropriate team exists in the player’s local Association on which they can play, the transfer will be denied. However, most transfer requests occur because no team exists in the local Association on which that player can participate. This could be due to a lack of participants in the local Association, or a lack of ‘AA’ or ‘AAA’ teams for those players wishing to play competitive or performance ball. In such cases it is more important that ALL players, regardless of location, be given an opportunity to participate, and therefore those transfer requests are generally approved. Because ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’ teams are competitive, if the number of registrations exceeds the maximum allowable roster size for a team, then competitive tryouts will be held and Coaches will be free to make selections for their team based on their needs and the players’ performances. In some cases, this can lead to local players losing competitive roster spots to non-local players who out-perform them in tryouts, or fulfil other team needs such as Coaching/Management requirements.

In all cases, ALL players will be given an opportunity to play ball even if unsuccessful in a competitive tryout process. Players unsuccessful at the ‘AA’ level will be offered a roster spot at the ‘A’ level locally within Barrhead (and their competitive fees will be refunded), or they can attempt to tryout for another competitive ‘AA’ or ‘AAA’ team from another Association and, if successful, submit a transfer request to the BMBA (which will be approved).