By NATHAN WHALEN

Special to The Record

The baseball coaches of the Emerald Sound Conference named South Whidbey’s Grady Davis baseball Player of the Year.

Davis is a pitcher for the Falcons and helped lead South Whidbey to two wins in the District 1/2, 1A tournament.

Davis said he struggled at the start of the season. Then in late March, he took a day off to reset mentally and physically.

“Coming out of that, I started getting hot,” Davis said. He highlighted South Whidbey’s game against King’s March 24 where the Falcons won 3-2. “The King’s game kind of set the tone for me all season.”

He added that he pitched seven innings and had 10 strikeouts in the win against King’s. “They’re a tough team – they scrapped,” Davis said.

He said his record pitching for the season is 5-2, with a .532 ERA and 39 strikeouts. He also bats .455.

In the District 1 tournament, Davis pitched six innings and threw nine strikeouts during a play-in game May 7 against Nooksack Valley where South Whidbey won 8-1, Davis said. He pitched again May 10 where he pitched seven innings and threw nine strikeouts in a 2-1 victory against University Prep.

South Whidbey baseball coach Tom Fallon said Davis is a quiet leader.

“He’s kind of a lead-by-example kid,” Fallon said. “He doesn’t tell me how good he is, he goes out and shows me how good he is.”

He highlighted Davis’s ability to be a “table setter,” He gets in scoring position a lot hitting doubles, triples and stealing bases.

“He’s an all-around player. He plays his guts out all the time,” Fallon said.

In addition, center fielder Connor Bartel and Malachi Pierson earned second-team all-conference honors, Fallon said.

Davis, who is a senior, has been playing varsity at South Whidbey for four years and he has been pitching for nine years starting in South Whidbey Little League.

Baseball will be part of Davis’s life after he leaves South Whidbey. He is planning to play baseball when he attends Bellevue College. He wants to major in business with an emphasis on construction management.

He is preparing to pitch Saturday, May 17, against King’s at Sehome High School in Bellingham. The winner of the game qualifies for State. The game will be the third time this season South Whidbey and Kings have played. They split the previous two games.

Game time is at 1 p.m.