The Attnang-Puchheim Athletics, four-time Austrian champions, have withdrawn from the 2023 Austrian Bundesliga citing a string of squad departures and long-term injuries to key players that would have severely limited the team’s ability to compete in the top flight. The club will look to reorganize in the second division, with the aim of intensifying its youth work and building a core of local talent that will be at the heart of the club’s eventual return to the Bundesliga.
“We don’t want to remain in the league at any price. It would be unfair to our numerous young talents to throw them in at the deep end without the proper preparation and thus possibly overwhelm them. The line between challenging them and possibly demanding too much of them was simply too narrow,” declared Martin Libiseller, the club’s head of baseball operations.
Sebastian Libiseller, the club’s president, stated that the Athletics could have found the resources to field a competitive Bundesliga squad in 2023, but doing so would have required redirecting resources from longer-term initiatives, such as its youth work. Two years ago, as part of a strategic review, the club determined that intensifying its youth work and growing the game in its home region of Upper Austria was essential to its long-term future.
With field upgrades completed in 2021, the Athletics, who are known far beyond Austria’s borders as hosts of the Finkstonball baseball and softball festival and the Summerball youth summer camp, moved one step closer to making the club’s long-held desire to establish a regional baseball academy a more feasible endeavor.
The Athletics have won four Austrian championships, all since 2008, including, most recently, back-to-back titles in 2016 and 2017.
The club finished the 2022 regular season in second place in the Bundesliga’s West division, with a 16-12 record, and was eliminated in five games in the first round of the playoffs by the Vienna Metrostars.