The Pioneer Baseball League “accepted the resignation of the Northern Colorado Owlz baseball club as a team in the league,” the PBL announced Monday. In its place, the league will operate a second team in Colorado Springs, the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, to play out the Owlz schedule.

The Owlz just completed a six-game series in Ogden, avoiding a sweep with a win Sunday to move the team’s record to 6-29.

Owlz players will assume the Sky Sox identity temporarily for the rest of the 2025 season as the Pioneer League said the Owlz coaching staff would also take over in Colorado Springs. The Rocky Mountain Vibes began PBL play in Colorado Springs after relocation from Helena, Montana, in 2019, when the former Triple-A Sky Sox were moved to San Antonio.

The Owlz began in the Pioneer League as the Provo Angels from 2001-04, playing on the campus of BYU, before being purchased by Jeff Katofsky and moving to nearby Orem as the Owlz from 2005-19, playing at Utah Valley University. Owlz and owner Katofsky announced during the 2018 season that the team would be moving to Pueblo, Colorado.

That deal with city and county leaders in Pueblo, which included an attempt at a new stadium, a complex of youth fields and a few hotels, was never completed. Katofsky refocused those efforts to Windsor, Colorado. When the Pioneer League emerged from the COVID-19 shutdown, which erased the 2020 season, as an independent league in 2021, the Owlz sat out before beginning play in 2022 with home games at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

The team’s new stadium, set as part of the Future Legends Sports Complex in Windsor, never happened. Construction was completed at the complex for some fields and a sports bubble.

But a judge placed the complex in a “receivership” over unpaid loans in September 2024, which removed Katofsky and co-owners from operating at the facility, and Katofsky and company filed for bankruptcy one month later, The Coloradoan reports.

The Loveland Reporter-Herald, which reported in 2024 that Katofsky faced a lawsuit from its largest creditor, reported in March that Katofsky and Future Legends reached a settlement with that creditor.

The city of Windsor in April also revoked a temporary certificate of occupancy for the facility. Katofsky sued the city for the move.

Still, the Owlz opened the 2025 season in May with the other 11 teams in the Pioneer League, first playing eight road games against the Vibes to open the slate.

The future of the Owlz is unclear. The team said in a statement it will “evaluate the team and the future of professional baseball here in the off season as we hope to get back on track and open our youth baseball academy this fall. … The Owlz name remains in the hands of the Future Legends ownership team and is expected to continue to be in use as the main brand in Northern Colorado.”

The Boise Hawks, having been booted from the Northwest League as part of the same contraction that kicked the entire Pioneer League out of affiliation, joined the independent PBL as the eighth team in 2021. The Owlz and the Glacier Range Riders (the latter in Kalispell, Montana, who opened play with a privately funded stadium) joined the action in 2022 for a 10-team league.

The Oakland Ballers and the Yolo High Wheelers — the latter in Davis, California, now relocated to Marysville as Yuba-Sutter — joined in 2024 and made the 87-year league its largest at 12 teams.

Ogden has had a professional baseball presence in the Pioneer League (launched in 1939) and its predecessors dating back to 1901. Dave Baggott, John E. Lindquist and others bought the now-Raptors franchise and began play in the Pioneer League in 1994.