Throughout the summer, members of the USF baseball team will be
providing USFDons.com with a few words regarding their summer ball
experience. The eighth installment is brought to us by redshirt
freshman Jason Mahood.
#29 - Jason Mahood
Hey everyone! Jason Mahood here coming to you from
Longview, WA. I'm playing for the Cowlitz Black Bears in the
West Coast League. This summer the WCL consists of 9 teams, 2
of which are expansion teams. One of these expansion teams
is, you guessed it, the Cowlitz Black Bears and so as I get my
first summer baseball experience so does this town and team.
Unfortunately, there have been a lot of growing pains being the
first season and so as a team and organization we have struggled
much of the summer. We currently sit at the bottom of the WCL
standings and are going through a stretch were we play 21 games in
21 days to end the summer. However, even though we have
struggled to find consistency on the field and wins have been hard
to come by, the team is filled with a great group of guys.
Our head coach is Bryson Leblanc, who is an assistant coach at the
University of Oreagon. Coach Leblanc has been great for our
team because no matter what happens he always reminds us that we
should never stop having fun. So even as we struggle we are
able to keep things in perspective and not forget how fortunate we
are to have the opportunity we have been presented.
Longview sits about 45 miles north of Portland, OR and about 120
miles south of Seattle so I have had the opportunity to visit both
cities. Our team was able to take an off day and go to a
Mariners-Yankees game, which was awesome. Unfortunately,
because of our baseball schedule I wasn't able to get the
Mariners-Reds series (GO REDS!!!!).
The weather in Longview has been very interesting to say the
least. We got a lot of rain in June, but it would come in
stints and then the sun would come out. However, it has
warmed up in July and been quite nice, and actually reminds me of
parts of the Bay Area.
Well, thats about it. I'm excited to get back home and back
to the city. Hope everyone is having a great summer and GO
DONS!!!!
