Oak Harbor, Coupeville graduates continue athletic careers in collegiate sports

A handful of Oak Harbor and Coupeville high school graduates competed in college athletics this spring, and several put together all-conference seasons while others qualified for national tournaments.

Baseball

Oak Harbor’s Anthony Stewart, a junior center fielder on the University of Minnesota Crookston baseball team, earned All-Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference second-team honors this spring. He was also UMC’s Athlete of the Month for May.

Stewart finished the season with Crookston’s second highest batting average (.332) and led the team in runs (46), triples (4), home runs (5), RBI (34) and stolen bases (13). He also posted a team-leading .387 on-base percentage and .478 slugging percentage.

On defense, he topped the team with a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage (no errors), while recording 125 putouts and five assists.

His best game came at Northern State April 27 when he went 4-for-6 with a home run, two runs, an RBI and a stolen base.

Crookston’s 24 wins were one shy of the school record set last year.

Coupeville’s Ben Etzell, the closer for the Division III St. John’s College (Collegeville, Minn.) baseball team, was named to the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference first-team this spring.

Etzell threw 32 innings in 18 games, posting a 2.23 earned-run average, best for the Johnnies among regular pitchers. The junior also led the team with five saves, a .875 strikeouts-per-inning average and a .183 opponent batting average. For the season, he struck out 28, walked 17 and had a 3-1 won-loss record.

He did not allow a run in 13 of his appearances and only two runs over his final 11. St. John’s finished with a 25-13 record, 14-6 in conference play.

Aaron Trumbull, a freshman from Coupeville, is a member of the Olympic College (Bremerton) baseball team. Trumbull appeared in 18 games and registered 27 at bats with one hit, one run, one sacrifice hit, one hit by pitch and two walks for the 12-30 Rangers.

Track

Oak Harbor graduate Dejon Devroe earned an automatic berth in the NCAA Division II national championship track meet by breaking the Shorter University (Rome, Georgia) 800-meter record by two seconds with a 1:49 at the Alabama Relays in April. With that effort, he was named the Gulf South Conference’s Men’s Track Performer of the Week.

Devroe won the GSC championship in the 800 in 1:51.54 April 22.

He also earned All-American status in the 800 during the indoor season earlier this year.

Alexandra Laiblin, a sophomore on the Western Washington University track team, recorded the10th-best time ever for a Viking, 37:42.36, in the 10,000 meters when she placed seventh in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference championships May 12. She was also 17th in the 5,000 (18:39.56) in the league finals.

Laiblin’s top finishes for the year were second in the 10,000 at the Ed Boitano Invitational March 4 and third in the 5,000 at the Shotwell Invitational April 1.

The Oak Harbor graduate also earned Great Northwest Athletic Conference all-academic honors for the second time.

Coupeville’s Dalton Martin, a freshman at Everett Community College, placed sixth in the discus at the Northwest Athletic Conference Championships May 22 and 23 with a throw of 130-02. His mark of 137-10 at the Ralph Vernacchia Open April 29 was the fourth-best by any conference athlete in 2017.

Softball

Sophomore Hailey Hammer was one of the leading hitters for the Everett Community College softball team this season. The Coupeville grad batted .330 (37-for-112), fourth best on the team, over 39 games for the Trojans. She was fourth in hits (37), second in triples (1), third in home runs (2), third in RBI (22) and fourth in walks (16). She also slugged two doubles and scored 19 runs for Everett, which finished 13-28. Defensively, Hammer topped the Trojans with 218 putouts.

Monica Vidoni completed her two-year, three-sport career at Rainy River Community College (International Falls, Minn.) by playing softball for the Voyageur’s this spring. The sophomore from Coupeville appeared in 31 games, hitting .333 (18-for-54) with three doubles, 15 RBI, seven walks and four stolen bases. She posted a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage while recording 20 putouts for Rainy River (23-17, 7-5).

Oak Harbor’s Alexa Findley competes for the California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks) softball team. The freshman catcher appeared in 16 games for the Regals, getting one hit, a double, in 13 at bats. She also had two RBI and two stolen bases. Behind the plate, she recorded 21 putouts and four assists, while throwing out one would-be base stealer. CLU finished 2017 with a 17-19 record, 14-14 in conference.

In addition to her work on the diamond, Findley was inducted into CLU’s Scholar-Athlete Society for her academic efforts.

Winter athletes

Two Oak Harbor High School graduates, Mara Rouse and Courtney Shavers, were not included in the story about local graduates competing in winter sports published earlier this year in the Whidbey News-Times.

Rouse is a freshman member of the University of Texas at El Paso rifle team. She scored a team-high 1,156 (565 small-bore, 591 air rifle) in a match against Ohio State Nov. 6. Her air rifle score was the highest of the season to that point for the Miners.

Rouse fired a career best 568 in small-bore at the six-team Patriot League Championships, second-best among the team; she was also second for UTEP in aggregate.

In addition to the regular season, Rouse was invited, along with three teammates, to compete in the USA Shooting National Junior Olympic Championships in Colorado Springs in April. She finished 74th out of 200 in air rifle.

Shavers competes for the Bacone College (Muskogee, Okla.) wrestling team.

Shavers represented the Warriors at 157 pounds and placed fourth in the NAIA South Qualifier Feb. 18, good enough for a berth in the NAIA national championship tournament. At the national meet, he dropped both his matches.

He also placed third in the Wayland Invitational Dec. 3 and fourth in the Oklahoma City University Open Nov. 6.