At a time when registration is booming in outdoor soccer and remaining steady in softball, baseball is becoming a sort of lost art in Whitehorse.

Local interest in the historic pasttime continues to decline, despite the fact many people in the territory have been doing their best in the past few years to help baseball make a comeback.

The minor baseball league in the capital city was cancelled in 2005, and will once again be put on hiatus this summer. While there are dozens of team registered in adult coed softball, Baseball Yukon has had a tough time even getting one men's team together to compete at tournaments.

As a last-ditch effort to kick-start the program, Baseball Yukon President Bob Cowman helped put together a high school championship last summer.

As teams from Vanier, Porter Creek and F.H. Collins vied for the championship trophy, the hope was the sport would once again catch on with the teenaged athletes.

The reaction after last year's event was very positive. There was even talk about putting together a rep baseball team that would travel outside of the territory to tournaments.

But fast forward a year, and Cowman will be the first to tell you, things haven't exactly been going as planned. In fact, high school baseball has taken a step backward.

Porter Creek was unable to enter a team in the championships this year, although not because of player interest, according to Cowman. P.C. was unable to find a coach who had the time to look after a team.

The entire situation is frustrating for Cowman, who is now unsure if there will even be baseball at all in the territory next year. He's attending a meeting tomorrow where the local schools will discuss their athletic calendar for next year and he's not really sure how it will go. He's also not sure how much longer he can keep trying to turn things around.

'I've been doing this for 15, 16 years. We need some new blood. I just can't continue this if things stay the same.

'If I could just get everyone involved in playing the game and not worrying about personalities ... it's about understanding the game, the history of the game.'

While baseball isn't exactly a phenomenon anywhere across Canada, Cowman said it still does well in the urban centres down South. But other smaller communities like Whitehorse are also having a hard time, he acknowledged.

'That's the way it goes. It's the trends in society.

'A lot of kids have moved to soccer. They see it as more cardiovascular, less chance of injuries, which is false.

'Soccer has taken a lot of interest in some of the other sports away. There used to be a huge football program across the country as well, but that died out in the 1980s.'

Once youth actually try a few games of baseball, it's appealing, said Cowman, because it's very much a team sport and it's never over until the final inning, no matter how many runs the other team may be ahead by.

'That's the interesting thing about baseball,' he said in an earlier interview. 'Anything can and usually does happen. Just ask the (New York) Mets.'

Or the Vanier White Sox.

On Tuesday evening, the White Sox faced the F.H. Angels in Game 1 of a best-of-three series, with the winner to be crowned high school champions. Vanier won the title last year.

F.H. got on the board first Tuesday, with three runs in the bottom of the first inning. They were leading for most of the game and at the end of the fourth, it was 8-5 F.H.

In the top of the fifth, with two out and the bases loaded in the White Sox's last at-bat, Jimmy Semaschuk who also pitched all five innings for Vanier cracked a grand slam and Vanier took Game 1 by a final score of 9-8.

Game 2 goes Tuesday, June 6, at 4 p.m. at Porter Creek. The third and final game, if needed, will also be held at the P.C. diamonds, June 8 at 4 p.m.

If the interest stays the same, that final game of the high school championships could also be the last competitive baseball game played in the territory, at least for the next few years.