Mid-Columbia athletes are making their mark this college baseball season
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Just a quick check-in on what some of our area’s college baseball players have been doing, and it’s impressive.
Let’s start with two true freshmen in Danny Dickinson and Hudson Shupe.
Dickinson, a Kennewick High grad, has been Utah Valley University’s leadoff hitter most of this season. The team is 12-10 as off games of March 22, and he’s hitting a team-best .338 (22 hits in 65 at bats). He also has two home runs and 10 RBIs.
Shupe, meanwhile, is a Hanford High grad playing for Seattle University. He too is leading his team in batting average at .348 (23 for 66). He also has an on-base percentage of .394.
Meanwhile, Jackson Lind (Kennewick) has been hot lately for Seattle U, hitting .333 (12 for 36). In a run over the past few weeks, Lind has hit two home runs, two triples, and a double.
Trent Sellers, a Kennewick High grad, is playing his final season of college eligibility with Oregon State University after spending most of his career with Lewis-Clark State.
Sellers is the Beavers’ ace so far, touting a 2-2 record, with 39 strikeouts in 22.2 innings pitched, with a 3.18 earned run average.
And WSU has a trio of local guys, starting with pitcher Caden Kaelber from Chiawana.
The Cougs moved Kaelber from the bullpen into the starting rotation, and he has thrived.
He’s 3-0 with a 3.54 ERA. In five starts, Kaelber has struck out 37 batters in 28 innings of work.
The Cougars’ closer is Chase Grillo (Kamiakin), who has 5 saves in his 9 appearances. Grillo’s ERA is 2.79, and he has 14 strikeouts in 9.2 innings of work.
A couple weeks ago, Grillo came in to save a game for Kaelber. The two were once roommates in college.
Also on the WSU team is Jake Harvey, a Southridge High grad who has also played for Oregon State and Cal State Fullerton.
Harvey has played in about half of the Cougars’ games, hitting .385 (10 for 26) with 7 RBIs.
WSU is off to a 14-6 start.
Tri-City Junior Americans
The Tri-City Junior Americans seem to be making it an annual habit of advancing to the national tournament.
Earlier this month, the team qualified for the Youth Tier II 18U nationals by winning the state championship in Tacoma.
This is the same team that played in the Tier II 16U nationals last year in Troy, Mich.
This time around, the tournament will be held in Maple Grove, Minn., and begins March 30.
To get there, the Jr. Americans went 2-0 in pool play, then beat Sno-King 2 games to 1 in a best-of-3 championship.
In a 5-2 Game 1 loss on March 4, Sean Poloski and Cooper Leonard scored goals.
Later in the day, Tri-City bounced back to win 7-2, as Jackson Hammond and Nicholas Sinyuk each scored two goals.
So it came down to the rubber match on March 5, and Tri-City won 8-3.
David Sinyuk, Hammond and Leonard each scored two goals apiece.
Here’s the pool-play schedule for the Junior Americans in Minnesota (all times local):
March 30, 9 a.m., vs. the Raleigh (N.C.) Raptors;
March 31, 4:15 p.m., vs. Nashville Jr. Predators;
April 1, 2 p.m. vs. Ashburn (Virg.) Xtreme.
The top teams in pool play advance to the playoffs.
Tri-City Jr. Americans team members are Owen Bergstrom, Aubrey Borchers, Landen Brooks, Logan Day, Cameron Derham, Jackson Hammond, Colby Hembree, Zackaria Jacobs, Collin Keenan, Cooper Leonard, Ashton Linhoff, Ethan Lockard, Nicholas Orozco, Adam Pellerin, Chase Pettit, Sean Poloski, James Rush, David Sinyuk, and Nick Sinyuk.
BYU track and field
Keep an eye on the BYU track and field team this spring, specifically the women’s javelin.
That’s where you’ll find Connell High grad Ashton Riner-Lunt, who is the defending NCAA javelin champion.
Riner-Lunt opened her season two weekends ago by winning her event at the Stanford Cardinal Classic by throwing the javelin 173 feet, 6 inches.
That’s a good start to the season.
Meanwhile, Kenneth Rooks (College Place) teamed up with three others to earn first team All-America honors in the Distance Medley Relay at the NCAA Indoor Championships earlier this month.
Rooks and his teammates finished ninth with a time of 9 minutes, 39.45 seconds.
Also on the men’s team is Kamiakin grad Isaac Teeples, who is a distance runner.
CBC Hall of Fame
CBC athletic director Scott Rogers said the athletic department’s Follow Your Dreams banquet and fundraiser, held last month, was a resounding success.
It was a sellout, and raised over $60,000 for facilities and scholarships.
The Hawks also had four inductees into the school’s athletic hall of fame:
Janet Middleton Esparza, a star basketball and volleyball player for CBC in the late 1970s.
Bud Hare, a star running back for the 1961 football team. Hare was also an all-conference baseball player for the Hawks.
The 1999 men’s soccer team, which went 18-2-1 in just its second year of existence, winning the NWAACC title that year.
The 1965 football team, coached by Dwight Pool. It went 9-0 and had nine all-state players.
Hydroplanes
Kelly Stocklin is bringing his 440 hydroplane back out onto the H1 Unlimited circuit this coming season, in addition to the U-40.
Stocklin drydocked the 440 for all of 2022 just so he and his team, including then-driver Dave Villwock, could make a run at the season high-points title.
Villwock ended up flipping the U-40 in the Tri-Cities, and he and Stocklin parted ways by season’s end.
By adding the 440, Stocklin helps the H1 boat count, which was way down last season.
Brent Hall has been named the boat’s driver, and he’ll drive it in June’s spring training event in the Tri-Cities. Then he’ll come back to the Tri-Cities and Seattle for those races.
Hockey
Former Tri-City Americans defensemen Juuso Valimaki will spend at least another season with the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes.
The Coyotes like Valimaki so much they recently signed him to a 1-year contract extension worth $1 million.
Valimaki is currently in the second year of a 2-year deal that pays him $1.5 million.
Basketball
Ran into Talia von Oelhoffen last week at the NWAC basketball championships.
The former prep standout from Tri-Cities Prep, then Chiawana, had just had surgery on her knee to repair a torn meniscus that she had been playing on all season at Oregon State University.
She finally had to shut things down in late February.
Yet she’d done enough this past season to earn Pac-12 Conference honorable mention honors.
The surgery went well, and she expects to be ready sometime before the 2023-24 season begins.
She’s going back to campus this spring to be with her teammates.
Jeff Morrow is former sports editor for the Tri-City Herald.
