Riley Spencer left home in the hope of getting a baseball scholarship, and now he has reached that goal.
The pitcher from Estevan is headed to Louisiana to play ball at the post-secondary level.
Spencer has earned a scholarship to Louisiana State University in Shreveport, a branch of LSU.
The school's baseball team, the Pilots, plays under the umbrella of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.
"It's a pretty good ball program down here," Spencer said in an interview from Shreveport, a city of about 200,000 near the border with Texas.
Spencer, who graduated from Estevan Comprehensive School in 2009, said the opportunity came about through a connection.
"When I was in school in Alberta, my coach there knows the coach down here and he told him about me and sent some video."
The former Estevan midget Blazer moved to Lethbridge after graduating to attend Lethbridge College and play with the Varsity Dawgs.
Spencer was a member of two Canadian championship teams with the Dawgs. He also played summer baseball with the Lethbridge Bulls in the Western Major Baseball League.
He said getting a scholarship was his "main goal" when he moved to Alberta and that the experience made him a better player.
"It helped a lot, really. It's a lot of work to go through. You really gotta focus on what you want to do and where you want to go with yourself," he said.
Spencer is taking the business program at LSU.
He is looking for a spot in the rotation with the Pilots, but doesn't know yet what role he'll be asked to fulfil.
"As of right now I don't know, but I'm shooting for being a starting pitcher," he said.
"I command most of my pitches pretty well, so I know I can go in and get the job done and be 100 per cent from start to finish."
Spencer has spent some time getting accustomed to the new environment and said it's a big adjustment from living on the Prairies.
"It's real different from back home. The weather's different, 100 degrees every day. Even the atmosphere, the school's different, the people are different."
