Daniel Copeland couldn’t really imagine a better end to his prep sports career.
After he connected a three-run home run so well that he “knew it was gone as soon as it left the bat” on his last high school at-bat to help his American League team win the 31st Southwest Washington Senior All-Star Baseball Series by a combined 27-6, the Skyview pitcher was awarded MVP honors.
That came with a $300 college scholarship, too, which to Copeland was a pleasant surprise.
And though he swears he has no personal beef between any of his league opponents — not even Camas, he said — he made some friends that just weeks ago were rivals during the annual season-ending celebratory game at Propstra Stadium on Wednesday night.
“To be honest I hadn’t met half these guys, so it was great to come out here and get to compete with them,” Copeland said. “I made a lot of friends in the dugout.”
The event drew the region’s top seniors and the coaches of teams that finished in the top-two of their league. The only standout not present was King’s Way senior pitcher Damon Casetta-Stubbs, who was at a pre-draft workout with the Seattle Mariners in advance of the MLB Draft.
As tradition, the coaches convene after the game at select 10 players out of the 47 players on the roster to compete at the All-State Series in Yakima next week. A committee will decide Sunday if it wants to choose any of those 10 players.
Of the now-31 all-star games held in Vancouver, Prairie coach Don Freeman has been a part of most of them.
But this year was his first year since he left Prairie in 2004. Freeman, a recent inductee into the WIAA Hall of Fame, used to know every one of the local players participating in the event during his some-27-year coaching run in Washington state.
This year, those players were now the coaches in the event.
Skyview coach Seth Johnson played at Kelso, Union’s Ben McGrew and Hockinson’s Shaniko Ristau went through Bay and Mountain View’s Aaron Coiteux played at Evergeren.
Freeman coached against them all.
Current coach Evergreen coach Chad Burchett was Freeman’s assistant before he took over for him back in 2004, and Ridgefield’s Nick Allen coached at USA Baseball with Freeman, who helped him relocate from Arizona to Clark County.
“It’s kind of fun to see guys who build their life around the sport like this and are always around helping kids like people did for them when they were kids,” Freeman said.
As for the kids on Wednesday, it was a 1A player, La Center’s Saige Keep, who shared MVP honors with Copeland.
Keep went 3 for 3 in the first game, including a home run so pure, he “didn’t even feel it off the bat.” It was the first homer his grandparents had ever seen him hit, he said, since each one this season was away from home.
For some whose team did not make the post season, almost a month has passed since their seasons ended. That was the case for the Hudson’s Bay players present, particularly Quadrese Teague and Marco Cadiz.
The duo wanted to showcase what made them so talented across three sports — hint: speed — to the whole county.
“We’re the speedsters from Bay,” Teague said of him and his fellow outfielder. “Everyone calls us nightmares. We’re proud of that. No one else has that. That duo. I’m thunder, he’s lightning.”
Teague and Cadiz, both standouts in football, basketball and baseball, cap a senior year that included a historic postseason berth in football, then an unlikely postseason berth in basketball after the team started 0-7. Saying goodbye to all that was bittersweet for the two.
He recalled a time when Cadiz didn’t sport a scruffy display of facial hair.
“I didn’t really show emotions during football, basketball, it just hit me with baseball,” Teague said. “I’m going to miss it because you build bonds, relationships with one another and watch each other mature and get stronger. I’m going to miss it, but it’s going to be something I’m always going to remember.
