Todd Hubka is the ultimate team guy.
You ask him about Prairie Baseball Academy and he will happily oblige in a conversation about his alumni, the current roster, future recruits, community support … he’s all in.
Getting him to talk about himself is not the easiest of tasks.
Take PBA’s annual banquet as an example: Hubka takes a lot of pride in helping organize the Hall of Fame induction classes year after year.
So the long-time coach admits it became slightly awkward when he found out he was being named the lone inductee for the Class of 2025.
In front of a packed house on a cold night in Lethbridge, the proud Southern Albertan rose to speak after a standing ovation to honour his work.
“It was a heartfelt night and very humbling experience, for sure,” Hubka told Alberta Dugout Stories: The Podcast. “I’ve never had anything like that before … it’s always PBA first and the individuals somewhere down the line.”
Even a few days after the ceremony, Hubka was still beside himself over the show of support and the fact it’s been nearly three decades with the Prairie Dawgs.
RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
A multi-sport athlete growing up, Hubka always excelled on the baseball field.
He threw a no-hitter for Willow Creek Composite High School in Claresholm in 1988 before suiting up for the Fort Macleod Royals American Legion squad, then went down to North Idaho College where he was named to the All-Conference Team.
After helping the Oyen Pronghorns win the Saskatchewan Major Baseball League title in 1995, he says he started looking for coaching opportunities.
He says Doug Jones recommended he reach out to Blair Kubicek to see if the new Prairie Baseball Academy might be a good fit.
“We sat down for an hour and a half and he hired me on the spot,” Hubka recalled.
“It’s crazy that 29 years have gone by – I guess I love it because it sure in the hell doesn’t feel like 29 years.”
He served as an assistant coach before taking the reigns as head coach in 2011.
MORE THAN JUST WINS
As Hubka looks back on the last 29 years, he’s thoughtful about his approach to answering questions about the success of the program.
They won seven-straight Canadian College Baseball Conference championships from 2011 to 2017, and Hubka owns a .580 winning percentage as a head coach.
There’s the program itself, which came from humble beginnings, now having a great facility at Lloyd Nolan Park and plans for growth.
“It seems like yesterday that we were in those indoors in north Lethbridge and didn’t have a field,” Hubka said. “To where PBA is now and how successful it’s been, yeah, it means everything to me.”
Despite all that, Hubka says he’s most proud of seeing where PBA alumni end up.
Some – like Dustin Molleken, Shane Dawson and Lars Davis – go onto chase professional dreams, while others like Brandon Magierowski, go onto great professional careers away from the game.
Hubka beams about following many on social media just to see them with families of their own.
TRIBUTES TO A LEGEND
Trying to keep the details of the banquet and celebration a secret from Hubka proved to be a bit of a task for the PBA Alumni Association.
Not only did they want as many former players to come out, but they wanted a few special guests there as well, including long-time friends Magierowski and Scott Rhodes.
One prominent figure in Hubka’s life has been his Royals and junior college coach, Rocke Musgraves.
While he wasn’t able to fly in, he did provide a video tribute to Hubka.
“That got the waterworks going a little bit,” Hubka laughed. “He’s probably why I love baseball as much as I do is because of that man.”
Former PBA player and current Vauxhall Academy coach Les McTavish, who also played under Hubka with the original Lethbridge Bulls in 1999, introduced his long-time friend onto the stage.
“(He is) Lethbridge baseball,” McTavish said. “His fingerprint is so embedded in Lethbridge baseball, from Little League to the junior academy to the Bulls to Prairie Baseball Academy to the Vauxhall Academy.”
Long-time PBA assistant coach and fellow alumni Ryan MacDonald says Hubka is a deserving candidate for the Hall of Fame, as he’s set the tone for the program for a long time.
“Kind-hearted, rugged, tough around the edges, brutally honest, competitive and a guy who would run through the wall for you,” he said.
“He’s one of those guys that you just want to buy into the conversation and do anything for type-of-guy.”
Another alumni, current Sylvan Lake Gulls president and COO Aqil Samuel, remembers being named captain in his second season.
“Hubka’s bulldog mentality and expectation on what he wanted from me as far as work ethic and leadership was something that really stuck out,” he said. “His expectation was that a captain needs to lead and be the one some of the other guys would look to on how to take care of school, practice and play.”
Samuel says after his college playing days were done, Hubka and Kubicek invited him back to coach the first-ever junior varsity PBA squad, giving him a strong foundation of behind-the-scenes knowledge to make him into a good leader and coach as he got older.
FAMILY FIRST
The old saying goes, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Such is the case for Hubka, who says after all these years, he still can’t believe he gets to wake up every day to do baseball “work.”
At the centre of that world is his family, who joined him for the banquet.
“They are the ones you go home to every night and they have to put up with all your coaching nonsense,” Hubka said. “You’re gone so much from September until May, you’re missing Thanksgivings, you’re missing Easters, you’re missing birthdays, you’re missing Sunday dinners.”
He says they always understood how important coaching was to him and, while he may have been away a lot, “I love the hell out of them.”
Hubka says his family has seen him really happy and they’ve seen him down as well, but they have always stood by him.
“I love my family and thank them from the bottom of my heart for what they have allowed me to be able to do.”
Among those things is to put together a coaching career that gives him the status as an Alberta and Canadian baseball legend.
And while his modesty won’t necessarily allow him to say it, Hubka can rightly call himself a Prairie Baseball Academy Hall of Famer.
“What an honour it’s been to be here for 29 years,” he said. “It’s been awesome.”
A tip of the cap to Coach Hubs as he continues to cement his legacy.
A special shout-out to Cindy Adachi for her stellar work with PBA photography and graciously allowing us to use her photos for our stories, like the featured image above.
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