It didn’t take long for Reynolds to earn varsity spot at WFW. Now he’s All-Area Player of the Year
Like many baseball-minded kids growing up in Chehalis, Drew Reynolds wanted to find the quickest route to a spot on W.F. West High School’s heralded varsity baseball team.
As an eighth grader, he pored over the Bearcats’ 2017 roster and noticed the top two catchers were seniors. With family tradition already pulling him away from his usual position at first base, it was an easy decision for Reynolds to focus full-time on catching.
His two older sisters, Caitlin and Marissa, had starred at W.F. West and landed softball scholarships to NCAA Division I universities. Caitlin, though a left-handed thrower, caught for four years at the University of the Pacific. Marissa played outfield at Princeton and was team captain and All-Ivy League on a championship Tiger team in 2017.
“Both of them played varsity as freshmen at W.F. West. I really looked up to them,” said Reynolds. “Caitlin helped me with catching over the years.”
Four years, two state tournament appearances and a 2021 Southwest District 2A championship later, Reynolds is off to a D1 experience of his own. He’ll play at Texas Tech in the fall after pounding his last look at high school pitching for a .564 batting average and a scary 1.576 OPS.
His accomplishments earned Reynolds The Olympian’s 2021 All-Area Baseball Player of the Year honor. He is the third consecutive Bearcat selected, following two pitchers he caught early in his high school career, Tyson Guerrero (2018) and Brock Jones (2019).
With the season cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Olympian did not select an All-Area team in 2020.
“If you go back and think what an MVP is, Drew is an MVP,” W.F. West coach Bryan Bullock said. “As our catcher, he’s the leader in the field defensively. Nobody wanted to run on him. He does a great job with the pitching staff.
“Offensively, he has the potential to do something every time he’s up to bat and everybody knows it. He demands so much that he makes everyone around him better.”
When Reynolds did follow in his sisters’ footsteps and donned a varsity jersey his freshman season, his confidence took a big step up.
“If you’re on our team, you know you’re good because, in my opinion, we’ve got the best program in the state,” he said. “It was awesome when I did make it because right off the bat, freshman year, I’m catching three D1 guys.”
Brandon White was a senior, later a Los Angeles Dodgers’ draft choice who passed on the pros and went to Washington State, where he was 6-4 this season, finishing up with a victory over rival Washington. Guerrero was another senior. He started college at Washington State, transferred to Lower Columbia and on to Washington, where he was 3-3 this spring. Jones, a junior in ‘18, is now an Arizona Diamondbacks’ minor league lefty assigned to the Low-A Visalia Rawhide, but is currently on the 60-day injured list.
Though Reynolds says hitting is his favorite part of the game, catching a couple of those older flame throwers factored in a freshman memory he believes will always be his most vivid high school baseball moment.
In mid-April, Tumwater, often W.F. West’s prime rival in the 2A Evergreen Conference, came to town for a rare prep doubleheader, forced by an earlier rainstorm.
With Reynolds behind the plate, White dominated the first game, retiring the first 10 Thunderbirds, striking out 13 in his six innings of work and hitting 94 miles per hour on the radar gun in an 8-1 Bearcats’ win.
“That was a pretty cool game. After it was over, all the scouts went home,” Reynolds recalled.
As it turned out, the action was just starting. It was Jones’ day to break out in an extra inning victory for W.F. West.
The Bearcats took a 2-1 lead into the seventh inning of the nightcap, but Tumwater got a double from Reid Little and a stolen base from pinch runner Dylan Grotte. Called to the mound from the outfield for one of the few times all season, Jones ran afoul of a newly reinterpreted balk rule and the score was suddenly tied.
With Bullock and assistant coach Jason Kelley ejected for arguing, W.F. West’s athletic director and junior varsity coach were in the dugout to provide supervision. But Jones made the Bearcats’ strategy loud and clear.
“I’m behind the plate, Brock’s on the mound and he yells ‘Drew, I’m throwing fastball, fastball, curve,’ loud enough everyone in the stadium heard him. And then he did it,” Reynolds said. “When Brandon clocked 94 on the scouts’ guns, I thought that was pretty fast. But I’ve never caught a faster fastball than what Brock threw that day. We’ll never know how fast he threw but it was noticeably different than Brandon’s 94.”
Jones ultimately struck out the side in the seventh, eighth and ninth and the leadoff batter in the tenth before being removed because of a high pitch count.
For all the excitement of his freshman season, Reynolds ran into health issues – his and the world’s – that rendered the next two seasons all but moot.
As a sophomore, he broke the hamate bone in his right hand swinging the bat early in the season and ultimately had to have it surgically removed. It’s a common baseball injury, but Reynolds needed five months of rehab to return to full strength.
Then, the coronavirus spread. High school baseball’s 2020 season was cancelled. Reynolds played with his travel team, Lacey-based EnFuego, but believes work he did in the weight room had much to do with his senior season success.
“Something a lot of kids don’t see is, in baseball, at a certain level, everyone is a grown man,” the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Reynolds said. “You can’t be a little kid playing against grown men. I want to lift as much as a major leaguer.”
Reynolds’ insights into the game are typically on the money, said Bullock.
“Drew’s academically smart (a 3.9 GPA), he’s baseball smart,” Bullock said. “He’s a very mature hitter for a high school player. He doesn’t get fooled very often.”
Despite a chance he may be selected in next month’s MLB draft, Reynolds doesn’t believe his “under the radar” status after essentially missing two seasons of high school, combined with scouts’ caution about his injury, will land him in a lucrative enough slot to pass up the chance to play for Texas Tech, currently ranked fifth in the nation.
The Red Raiders hosted an NCAA Regional over the weekend.
“I’m coming out of high school as a diamond in the rough,” he said. “All I’m thinking about is playing at Texas Tech. I think they’re the best program in Division One baseball. I like the coaches, I like the atmosphere.”
PAST ALL-AREA PLAYERS OF THE YEAR
2001: Jarod Matthews, P, Yelm
2002-05: None selected
2006: Connor Lambert, P, River Ridge
2007: Sean Meehan, P-OF, Centralia
2008: None selected
2009: Taylor Hetrick, P, Timberline
2010: Jason Monda, OF, Capital
2011: Cabe Reiter, SS, Olympia
2012: Mitch Gueller, P-OF, W.F. West
2013: Leo Valenti, SS, Olympia
2014: Ryan Mets, P, North Thurston
2015: Parker McFadden, P, Yelm
2016: Kaleb Strawn, P-OF, Tenino
2017: Tucker Stroup, P-IF, Timberline
2018: Tyson Guerrero, P-OF, W.F. West
2019: Brock Jones, P, W.F. West
2020: None: season cancelled