Add college baseball to the growing list of entertainment activities residents of The Woodlands can enjoy. Beginning this summer, a Woodlands team of Texas Collegiate League Baseball will begin play at The Woodlands Christian Academy.

According to Ramiro Lozano, a longtime resident of The Woodlands who owns and operates the new team, play will begin June 1 following the college baseball season. The teams, he said, will be made up of freshmen, sophomores and juniors and will be an invite-only team.

" The type of player that you're going to see here are athletes who have left high school and who were all-district, all-state," Lozano said.

A team name has yet to be determined. Lozano said team organizers have been receiving submissions for potential names and that the list has been narrowed to two or three names. He said the team name will likely reflect the large presence of major oil and gas companies in The Woodlands.

The Woodlands team will join teams in Bryan, Victoria, McKinney, Kilgore, Youngsville, La., Alexandria, La., and Arcadia, La., to make up an eight-team league. The team will play four to six games per week to make up a 60-game schedule that Lozano said will be played over 75 days.

" Basically it's like a full time job," Lozano said. "It's an opportunity to let [the players] figure out if they're going to go on to the next level."

Players will use wooden bats in the Texas Collegiate League, similar to minor and major league baseball, and unlike college baseball, which uses aluminum bats.

The league is entering just its eighth year, but has already seen more than 150 players go on to play in either the Major League or a minor league affiliate, including former Houston Astro Hunter Pence and Clay Buchholz of the Boston Red Sox.

Paul Goldschmidt is a graduate of The Woodlands High School. He is played in the TCL and went on to play for the Arizona Diamondbacks organization.

" [The league] gave us the opportunity to play with athletes from all over the United States," he said. " It was good baseball and gave you a chance to play a higher level of the game, to better prepare you for the professional league. The fact that they use wood bats in this league is a huge asset in helping prepare a player for the Major Leagues. Coming out of high school and college using aluminum bats it is a big difference."

In order to provide adequate seating at The Woodlands Christian Academy, Lozano is paying to install about 600 seats. He said the WCA baseball field is ideal for the league, where games typically draw between 500 and 1,500 spectators.