Carleton baseball players Cameron McDonald-Hyman (Sr./Muir Beach, Calif./Tamalpais) and Alex Wirta (Fy./Corte Madera, Calif./Redwood) were featured in a recent story published in the Marin Independent Journal.
College notebook: Marin pair help Carleton College baseball team to historic season
By Vincent Tannura, Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.)
May 19, 2009
Neither Cam McDonald-Hyman nor Alex Wirta expected to end up at Carleton College in the small Minnesota river town of Northfield.
McDonald-Hyman, Tam High alumni who graduated in 2005, said he expected to go somewhere on the East Coast, hoping to play both football and baseball. Wirta, the MCAL baseball co-player of the year as a senior in 2008 for Redwood, only visited Carleton as a second thought during a trip to see fellow Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference school Macalaster in St. Paul.
Coincidentally, the two kids from rival high schools just miles apart both ended up at Northfield's small liberal arts school, and neither could be happier with his choice. Both were allowed to continue their baseball careers and in 2009 helped NCAA Division III Carleton to its second-winningest season in school history, and its first trip to the MIAC playoffs since the tournament was created in 2000.
Wirta, who is undeclared but intends to major in biology, was the Knights' second baseman and No. 2 starting pitcher, receiving all-MIAC recognition after batting .397 with 12 RBIs and 17 runs in 20 conference games and going 3-3 on the hill. He was the first Carleton freshman to be named all-conference since 1995, and just the seventh in the school's history.
"At the beginning of the year I was hitting terrible," Wirta said. "I had a really bad back that wasn't allowing me to do a lot of stuff. I believe my average was in the low .200s or high .100s. But then my back got better and I think I hit like .397 in conference, and my power started to come back, too."
McDonald-Hyman, who was a part-time starter over his last three years at Carleton and started 26 of the Knights' 40 games in the outfield this year, had the most important hit of the team's season. Carleton needed a sweep in its last doubleheader of the season on May 5 against Concordia College to reach the postseason for the first time in school history. The Knights won the first game, but trailed 6-5 in the top of the seventh, and final, inning with two outs when McDonald-Hyman stepped to the plate with runners on first and second. McDonald-Hyman, who had just five extra-base hits all season, doubled off the fence to plate both runs, and Carleton went on to win 7-6.
"That saved our season," said McDonald-Hyman, a bio-chemical major who will spend a year as a research assistant at Stanford University before going to graduate school. "That was really special for me to have the hit that allowed us to go to the playoffs. It was a great way to end my senior year."
Though the Knights (21-21, 12-8) were bounced from the playoffs with consecutive losses to St. Thomas, the No. 7-ranked team in D-III and bound for the D-III World Series, and Hamline, coach Aaron Rushing said the future for Carleton baseball is bright, even with McDonald-Hyman and four other impact players graduating.
"We've got a great future ahead with Alex as a freshman. He's one of four freshmen that have played a ton," said Rushing, the MIAC coach of the year. "We've got a great crew coming back. I'm pretty excited about where we're going."
If Rushing is able to turn Carleton's program around, it's funny to think that the Marin kids who ended up in Northfield by accident will go down in the school's annals as two of the more important players in Knights history.
