COLBY, Kan. – After reaching their first NJCAA Division 1 Baseball Plains District Tournament Title game in program history last year, the Cloud County Community College baseball team has been picked to win the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference Baseball West Division regular season title following a vote of league head coaches in the annual preseason order of finish poll.  

Coming off a 2025 campaign that saw the T-Birds go 48-17 overall and finish second in the KJCCC West Division standings, CCCC earned a total of 74 points and three of the nine first-place votes to edge out Hutchinson Community College who earned 69 total points and three first-place votes. Reigning KJCCC Baseball West Division regular season Champion Barton was picked to finish third with 67 total points and two first-place votes while being picked to finish in the top three of the poll in eight of the nine ballots submitted.   

Picked to finish fourth with 45 total points was both Butler and Dodge City as the Grizzlies and Conquistadors are looking to bounce back from fifth and sixth place finishes in the KJCCC West standings last year, respectively. Rounding out the preseason poll was sixth-place Colby (39 points), seventh place Seward County (29 points, one first-place vote), eighth-place Garden City (20 points), and ninth-place Pratt (17 points).   

The action gets underway for the 2026 season on Saturday, January 31st with Dodge City taking on Howard College and Seward County taking on Lamar Community College. The remaining seven KJCCC west division schools will all begin play over the following week with games spread throughout the week to kick off their non-conference action that will take place throughout the month of February. A 32-game conference slate for all nine schools is set to get underway on Thursday, March 5th with each team playing a four-game series against the other eight division foes with two games at each site and running through May 2nd.  

The top four teams in the final regular season standings of the west division will earn the right to host a best-of-three series against one of the teams from the east division who finish fifth through eighth in their division with the winners advancing to an eight-team double-elimination tournament that is scheduled for May 13-17. For the third time in the past four years, the eight-team double-elimination bracket portion of the tournament is scheduled to take place at Eck Stadium on the campus of Wichita State University following last year’s tournament being held at Dean Evans Stadium in Salina. The winner of the 2026 NJCAA Plains District Baseball Tournament will advance to the 2025 JUCO World Series in Grand Junction, Colorado May 23-29.