Baseball: Hunter Virant is an athlete
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With the baseball playoffs beginning next week, and after weeks of watching games from Orange County to Ventura County, I can say that junior pitcher-center fielder Hunter Virant of Camarillo is one of best athletes I’ve seen all season for any sport.
How he’s not playing quarterback for the Scorpions or starting at shooting guard for the basketball team is a mystery. As a baseball player, he’s batting .446 with 12 doubles and is 6-1 on the mound with a 1.46 earned-run average. He has stolen nine bases, and he’s as fast as they come on the bases and in the field.
He committed to UCLA last summer when he pitched for the first time in high school. That was one heck of a scouting job to project what he might be like this spring. Even his coach, Richard Jaquez, didn’t know how good a pitcher he might become.
Camarillo, the Pacific View League champion, is in Division 1, and the Scorpions could be a very dangerous team when Virant is on the mound.
-- Eric Sondheimer