VICTORIA聽 7
WENATCHEE聽 1
It isn鈥檛 rocket science. But it is civil engineering.
Nanaimo鈥檚 Garrett Goodall, the Victoria HarbourCats鈥� winning pitcher Saturday night in the 7-1 victory against the Wenatchee AppleSox at Wilson鈥檚 Group Stadium at Royal Athletic Park, has ambitious goals on the diamond.
Every player in the West Coast League dreams about eventually ending up like the 32 WCL alumni who played in Major League baseball last season. These are collegiate players and should, at the very least, be well prepared for civilian careers if the pro game doesn鈥檛 pan out.
As a 2017-18 redshirt freshman pitcher for NCAA Div. 2 Embry School of Aeronautics in Daytona Beach, Florida, Goodall certainly will be prepared for something, whether on or off the diamond. The sa国际传媒 Premier League product out of the Nanaimo Pirates is studying for a degree in civil engineering. That would follow in the path of his brother Liam Goodall, the all-time leader in hits, at-bats and games played in Embry baseball history, and now a civil engineer in Nanaimo. It鈥檚 a baseball family, with another brother, Aidan Goodall, a pitcher with the UBC Thunderbirds.
The righty Garrett Goodall, a former player in the sa国际传媒 Cup with Team sa国际传媒, started for Victoria on Saturday and went five complete innings. He gave up four hits, one run on a home run by Mason Marenco from Gonzaga, two walks, and struck out six before a Fireworks Night crowd of 5,420, a WCL regular-season record attendance.
鈥淚 want to be a good competitor and improve my game, and use this summer in the WCL to challenge myself against [NCAA] Div.聽1 hitters,鈥� said the six-foot-one all-rounder, who helped Nanaimo District Secondary qualify for the sa国际传媒 high school basketball championships in both his Grade 11 and 12 years.
Nathan Flores and Brodan Bydeweg brought home two runs each for Victoria and brothers Jaxxon and Jeddediah Fagg out of Georgia Southern and Nate Pecota one each, the latter with a double.
DIAMOND DUST: In what has to be a rarity in sports marketing, the HarbourCats under-reported Friday night鈥檚 paid attendance for the WCL season-opening 2-1 loss to Wenatchee at RAP. Because of a mis-count, a crowd of 2,971 was reported. It was actually 3,371 鈥� The HarbourCats and AppleSox close out their three-game set with a matin茅e today.
