In any sport, teamwork is essential.
And a group of current and former high school baseball coaches are putting that strategy to use to promote baseball in Clark County.
Clark County Baseball, a group led by local coaches, is hosting the Baseballism Pacific Northwest Kickoff Classic this weekend.
The tournament, thought to be the largest of its kind in the state, will feature 24 high school teams playing in five brackets Thursday through Saturday at four sites in Clark County.
“And we’re just praying for a little bit of sunshine,” said Jason Castro, assistant director of student services and athletics for Evergreen Public Schools.
Two years ago when Castro was the baseball coach at Heritage High School, he utilized the newly installed all-weather fields at Heritage to host an early season tournament.
Meanwhile over in Ridgefield, Ridgefield High School coach Nick Allen was hosting another tournament at the Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Center.
Then Castro, Allen got together with Battle Ground coach Seth Johnson and Ben McGrew, former coach at Columbia River, Hudson’s Bay and Union, and started talking about working together to make something even bigger.
The four coaches formed Clark County Baseball. On its website, the group explains: “Our collective vision is to highlight, celebrate and continue to grow baseball in Clark County.”
To do that, the group brought together smaller tournaments into one big event.
“We were saying ‘Why can’t make something really cool for the community?’ ” Castro said. “So we started to put something together, just one step at a time to see if we could pull something off.”
The first step was to find a sponsor. That led the group to Baseballism, a Portland-based apparel company born out of a common love for baseball.
Next, the group had to figure out how to make the event as big as possible, while still making it manageable and attractive to potential participating teams.
In Washington, high school baseball teams are restricted to a 20-game regular season and many leagues around the state have 18-game league seasons. That doesn’t leave much room for an early-season tournament.
So the group opted for holding the tournament broken into smaller brackets.
The largest bracket is an eight-team field that will play at the RORC with a three-game guarantee on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
The other four brackets will consist of four teams each playing two games each Friday and Saturday at fields at Union, Mountain View and Heritage high schools.
Tapping into the history of Clark County baseball, each bracket is named for former prep baseball standouts from the area who went on to play Major League Baseball — Richie Sexson, Ian Hamilton, Alan Embree, Robert Ramsay and Randy Myers.
“We are trying to celebrate Clark County,” Castro said. “I think a lot of the times because it rains in the Pacific Northwest, you feel like you kind of get forgotten a little bit for our baseball. But you look at the names who have come out of Clark County and gone on to have careers in the majors, it’s pretty impressive. And that’s what we’re trying to tap into.”
The tournament schedule has games at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday in Ridgefield, and 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Friday at the Evergreen Public School sites. The event concludes with games in the early and mid-afternoon on Saturday.
“Ideally, we would love good weather,” Castro said. “Like, please! Fingers crossed! Come on sunshine! But being blessed with as many turfed facilities that we have in the Vancouver and Clark County area, it’s like worst-case scenario we can play through rain. We can practically guarantee these games will get in.”
Ridgefield and Columbia River will play in the Richie Sexson Bracket at Ridgefield. Ridgefield kicks off the event at 4 p.m. against North Kitsap. WIAA executive director Mick Hoffman will be on hand at the RORC to throw out the first pitch, Castro said.
At Mountain View, La Center and Mountain View will play in the Alan Embree Bracket, while Battle Ground will play in the Robert Ramsay Brackets. Dr. Christine Moloney, superintendent of Evergreen Public Schools, will be on hand to throw out the first pitch on Friday.
Union will be among the four teams in the Ian Hamilton Bracket at Union. And the Randy Myers Bracket at Heritage will feature Heritage, Hudson’s Bay and Castle Rock.
Castro said there will be no admission charged for any of these games.
“What we’re hoping is that over the years … we’re hoping this becomes the premier kickoff event to the high school baseball season,” Castro said. “We want to continue to attract teams that want to come to Clark County for some high-quality baseball.”
