CBC players, Hanford High grad finish strong for West Coast League baseball

The Corvallis Knights did it again Monday night, beating the Bellingham Bells 5-0 to win their sixth consecutive West Coast League baseball championship.

Corvallis made it to the title matchup by stopping the Ridgefield Raptors in one semifinal series, while Bellingham did the same to the Wenatchee Valley AppleSox.

Wenatchee Valley had some players with Columbia Basin College connections late in the season.

Outfielder Steven Meier (Southridge/CBC) played in eight games at the end of the season, batting .417 (5 for 12), with 4 RBIs and 5 runs.

CBC teammate Brooks Rasmussen was 6 for 29 (.207) in 8 games late in the season, with 6 RBIs. But Rasmussen also appeared as a relief pitcher in two other games, going 7.1 innings, giving up no earned runs, just 2 hits, and striking out 10.

Xander Orejudos is an Ellensburg product who used to play at CBC but is now at Jamestown College. He played in 37 games for the AppleSox this summer, batting .317 with 16 RBIs and 10 stolen bases.

And a quick shoutout to Hudson Shupe, who graduated in June from Hanford High School and is headed this fall to Seattle University to play baseball.

Shupe spent the summer playing for the Victoria HarbourCats. In 38 games, the infielder hit .270, scored 24 runs, drove in 12 more runs, and stole 13 bases.

▪ Nice to see Tri-City Dust Devils right-handed pitcher Robinson Pina finally get the call-up this past week to the Los Angeles Angels’ Triple-A team in Salt Lake City.

Pina, at 6-foot-4, 224 pounds, was 6-6 this season for Tri-City. The 23-year-old struck out 117 batters in 81.2 innings of work, and he had an earned run average of 3.31.

Soccer

Talked with Hayden Crowley on Monday night, just checking in.

The Richland High School graduate is playing for the University of Washington women’s soccer team this fall, and the Huskies open their regular season this coming Thursday, at 7 p.m., at Husky Soccer Stadium against Fresno State.

“We have a lot of numbers,” said Crowley. “It’s really exciting.”

Even more exciting for Crowley is she becomes a teammate of Chiawana grad Summer Yates, who has spent some time with the USA National program and was a first-team All-Pac-12 player last year. Yates is a fifth-year player for UW.

“Summer graduated before I began to play for Richland as a freshman,” said Crowley. “So we’ve never been on the same field until now.”

The freshman forward comes in for the Huskies after being named the Washington state Gatorade girls soccer player of the year a few months ago.

“I was pretty surprised by that,” Crowley said. “I’ve got a lot of friends from the west side of the state that were up for that award.”

With the award, Gatorade gave Crowley a $1,000 grant that she could donate to the charity of her choice.

She chose to give the money to the YMCA of the Greater Tri-Cities.

There was a crossroads for Crowley as to whether she would play basketball or soccer growing up.

“I actually grew up playing AAU (basketball) in Richland,” she said.

But it was soccer that grabbed her heart at the Y.

“I was 9 or 10, and the Y is such a great organization,” said Crowley. “They don’t turn down any kids to play soccer. I also started playing indoor soccer with them.”

It also helped that her father and his friend were her coaches.

“It was always fun,” she said. “I was always so excited to go train.”

Like most good soccer players, Crowley moved on from the YMCA ranks to join a club team, as she continued to get better. And of course, now she’s playing Division I soccer.

“Soccer has always stuck with me,” Crowley said. “I really loved it out there (in the YMCA league).”

Football

Kennewick senior defensive lineman Carlos Orozco has received his first offer from a school for football. Lewis & Clark College of Portland has asked Orozco to come play for its program.

Orozco was a standout for the Lions during the Covid-shortened spring season of 2021 when he was a sophomore.

But he also injured his knee severely enough that he missed Kennewick’s entire season of the fall of 2021 — where the team advanced all the way to the 3A state championship game, falling to Bellevue.

Orozco should receive more offers.

Basketball

Malia Ruud of Chiawana will only be a sophomore this coming school year.

But she did enough last season as a freshman for the Riverhawks girls basketball team that Montana State University has already offered her a scholarship after a recent visit to the campus.

And like Orozco, Ruud will receive many more offers.

Volleyball

It might be fun to follow Eastern Washington University’s volleyball team this fall.

The Eagles have three players from the Mid-Columbia region on their roster: junior outside hitter Sage Brustad (Richland High grad); sophomore left-side hitter Makenna Collins, who is from Irrigon; and sophomore right-side/outside hitter Alyssa Radke, who prepped at Connell High School.

Eastern has an exhibition match at noon on Wednesday against Central Washington University, starting at noon.

The Eagles open their season with a tournament at Memphis on Aug. 26-27.

· By the way, that CWU team playing EWU on Wednesday has two local athletes on its roster: freshman defensive specialist Morgan Maxwell (Richland), and sophomore outside hitter Kylie Thorne (Chiawana).

Jeff Morrow is former sports editor for the Tri-City Herald.