2 top Tri-Cities baseball players given all-tournament honors for elite event
Baseball Northwest, an organization based out of Silverton, Ore., that mentors and helps develop high school baseball players, recently finished up its marquee event in Medford, Ore.
The 2021 Northwest Championships featured 30 all-star teams — broken down by graduation years in three separate tournaments, with players from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Utah.
At the end of the three tournaments, players are selected for all-tournament honors.
In the Class of 2022 tourney, two area athletes were selected: Kamiakin outfielder Nate Gray, Jr., playing for Washington East; and Richland outfielder Joe Weissenfels, playing for Washington Southwest.
Gray already has committed to playing for Lower Columbia Community College in Longview for the 2022-23 school year, while Weissenfels has done the same for Spokane Community College.
Meanwhile, two locals were honored for the Class of 2023 tournament: Southridge right-handed pitcher AJ Hendrickson, who played for Tri-State; and Richland right-handed pitcher Spencer Green, playing for Washington East.
Green, by the way, announced last week via Twitter that he already has committed to playing for Oregon State University.
▪ Southridge High graduate Conner O’Neil has been back pitching in the New York Mets farm system.
O’Neil, 26, suffered an injury a few years ago and had Tommy John surgery.
The injury occurred in the 2019 season, and like everyone else in the minor leagues, he missed the 2020 season.
O’Neil is pitching for the Brooklyn Cyclones of the High-A East league, and the right-hander has tossed 21 innings of work through 13 games. He has a 1-1 record and a 6.86 earned run average.
▪ Tri-City Dust Devils left-handed starting pitcher Hector Yan has a 2-7 won-loss record this season, with a 5.59 earned run average.
Not super numbers. But Yan, 22, has enough potential that he was chosen to play in the MLB Futures Game last month in Denver. Yan became the first-ever Dust Devils player to get the call to the game.
In 16 starts for Tri-City this season, Yan has 80 strikeouts in 75.2 innings of work.
Through five seasons in the Los Angeles Angels farm system, he has a 3.97 ERA.
Basketball
▪ When the new $30 million recreation facility project at Columbia Basin College is completed in 2022, it will house the school’s basketball/volleyball court — which is the centerpiece of the entire building.
But what makes it most fitting is the school has decided to name the court Holden Court.
It’s named after Cheryl Holden, the long-time CBC women’s coach who built plenty of powerhouse teams in her 13 seasons as the head coach.
Holden’s teams won four NWAC championships, and she had a cumulative won-loss record of 268-114 from 2001-14, when she retired as coach.
Couldn’t think of a better name for the new facility.
▪ Walla Walla High School grad Jacob Coram, known for his dead-eye outside shooting, will be playing this fall for the Whitworth University men’s basketball team.
That will give the Pirates two Mid-Columbia region athletes on the roster. Kamiakin grad Garrett Paxton — the Braves’ all-time leading scorer — has been playing for Whitworth for a couple of seasons already.
▪ Congrats to Chiawana’s Landyn Cantu, who signed for a basketball scholarship earlier this month at Bluefield College in Virginia.
Cantu, who graduated from Chiawana in June, was a big part of why the Riverhawks won the Mid-Columbia Conference boys basketball title in the 2019-20 season. He was part of that crew who could hit a 3-pointer when needed.
Football
▪ Elijah Rodriguez, a senior this fall at Richland High School, has been drawing interest from a number of schools at the next level.
Right now, they include Air Force Academy, Central Washington University, Dartmouth University and Montana State.
Rodriguez — who is 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds — was a first-team running back and defensive end this past spring for the Bombers.
Rodriguez dominated enough that Bombers coach Mike Neidhold decided to get him more touches than were originally planned.
▪ College Place will have a new football coach this fall in Jeff Bartlow. However, he’s no stranger to the region.
Bartlow was the long-time coach at Waitsburg, for 15 seasons, and led the Cardinals to the state football title in 2011. He took some time off to follow his son play at Eastern Oregon University, and most recently had been a counselor at Pioneer Middle School in Walla Walla.
But when Donald Ponds stepped down as the head coach at College Place, Bartlow jumped at the chance to get back into running a program.
Hockey
Former Tri-City American Jura Valach will once again play this coming season for Slovan Bratislava, a team that plays in the Extraliga in Slovakia.
Valach, a defenseman, signed a one-year contract extension with the team.
The 32-year-old played one season for the Americans, in 2006-07, and scored 7 goals and 23 assists in 58 games that season.
This story was originally published August 24, 2021 at 1:05 PM with the headline "2 top Tri-Cities baseball players given all-tournament honors for elite event."