baseball

February has been good to Troy Claunch, athletically and academically.

The Vacaville High graduate joined softball player Charity Sevaaetasi in being Oregon State Scholar-Athletes of the Month.

That followed Claunch batting .538 (7-for-13) with four runs and four RBIs as the Beavers opened their season by going 3-1 in the Sanderson Ford Baseball Classic in Surprise, Arizona.

Claunch was especially effective the first three games – a loss to Kansas State and wins over New Mexico and Gonzaga – going 7-for-10. He added three walks to give him a .625 on-base percentage.

Brayden Altofer (Vacaville) also got his season off to a solid start, batting .385 (5-for-13) with an RBI as Air Force split with LSU and lost to Louisiana Tech.

California kicked off its season by dropping three of four to Pacific with Cole Elvis (Vacaville) going 1-for-9 with a walk.

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The Monticello Empire League has released schedules for all its high school sports in a one-season calendar that ranges from Feb. 15 to the end of the school year.

High school sports has been on pause since last March due to the coronavirus pandemic but some sports will compete for the first time later this month.

The schedules are viewable at www.melsjs.org.

The MEL has categorized the sports into three groups — A. B and C, roughly in line with the colored coronavirus tiers.

Group A includes sports allowed in the purple tier — cross country, girls tennis and boys golf — as well as football, which is the orange tier.

MEL Commissioner Joan Mumaugh explained football’s inclusion in Group A.

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UC Berkeley head baseball coach Mike Neu starred for Vintage High School in Napa and coached at Diablo Valley College and the University of the Pacific. So when it comes to recruiting players for his Golden Bears, he knows the Northern California neck of the woods as well as anyone.

“We have as good or better network of people than almost anyone in the country in this area,” said Neu. “A lot of our best players have been from Northern California.”

Two of those players are Vacaville high grads Cole Elvis and Brian McClellin. Elvis, a junior at Cal, is the starting catcher. McClellin, a versatile infielder, is a freshman.

Elvis caught in 10 of the 16 games Cal got under its belt last spring until the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the season. As a freshman he caught games once a week, as Korey Lee, who was drafted in the first round by the Houston Astros, was the starting catcher. Elvis hit five home runs in just 51 at-bats that season.

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