BARRICK TAKES NEXT BIG STEP
Former Kelseyville High School baseball star headed to northern Minnesota's Bemidji State
KELSEYVILLE >> Logan Barrick’s career since his Kelseyville High School days is pretty much a life lesson for any collegiate athlete in Anytown, U.S.A. Things might not always go the way you want, but if you hang in there long enough and keep working hard, you’ve got a chance.
Barrick, 22, the former threesport star (football, basketball and baseball) for the Knights, is about to embark on a new journey, one that will take him all the way to Bemidji State University in Bemidji, Minnesota. It hasn’t been a straight line from Kelseyville to Bemidji for Barrick in the four-plus years since he graduated from Kelseyville in June of 2017, but he’s made it nonetheless.
“I think I’ll miss the weather the most,” the 22-year-old Barrick said of transitioning from the usually baseball-friendly climate in Northern California to the northern Minnesota city of approximately 15,000 where the average January temperature is 16.3 degree Fahrenheit. “That was the bulk of the Christmas presents I received, warm clothing,” he said.
Since he led Kelseyville to a 24-2 record in 2017, including a 13-0 record on the mound for the Knights that is among the best performances ever by a Lake County baseball player, Barrick’s college adventure has featured all kinds of twists and turns that had nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic — at least not at the start. Of course, the coronavirus has heavily impacted his collegiate career since the middle of March last year.
In fact, Barrick was diagnosed with COVID-19 late last year, delaying his eventual move to Bemidji, which begins Friday when he’ll embark on the 1,895-mile trip to the school’s campus (in a fourwheel drive pickup truck).
“I wanted to have a car there (at college), so I’m driving,” he said. “I hope to get there on Sunday and practice starts on Tuesday.”
Barrick said he had a mild case of COVID-19 that gave him “little headaches”. He didn’t know he had the virus until his grandmother tested positive. Barrick eventually tested positive as well. Both are now recovered after spending time in quarantine.
As a member of the Beavers baseball team, he’ll compete for a job as a starting pitcher and he’ll also continue to hit for himself. Bemidji is paying what amounts to 62 percent of his college tuition. His share of the rent for a five-bedroom house is $320 and he’ll share it with Bemidji teammates.
While Barrick wanted to remain in California because of the advantageous weather, he said there was no guarantee that California colleges, including Mendocino College in Ukiah, his home for much of the last three seasons, were going to play baseball in spring of 2021. After losing most of the 2020 season at Mendo to the coronavirus pandemic, he said he simply didn’t want to risk seeing another year go by the wayside.
“They’re playing there (at Bemidji),” Barrick said of the 2021 campaign. “At first I was concerned about pitching in colder weather, but after talking to their pitching coach, I felt a lot better.”
Why?
“They play four game games at U.S. Bank Stadium (the domed home of the Minnesota Vikings), four more games at Arizona, and four other games in the Southeast (as part of their early schedule),” Barrick said. “Their campus has this big, beautiful indoor facility that you can do almost everything in except batting practice because the balls keep hitting the roof,” Barrick said. “They also have a Division I weight room. Their hockey team is Division I (although other sports at the school, including baseball, are Division II).”
While Barrick is about to embark on his fourth collegiate campaign since his senior year at Kelseyville in 2017, he still has three years of college eligibility remaining. And there entails his story since he last donned a Knights uniform.
After graduating from Kelseyville, Barrick enrolled at Sierra College in Rocklin. He red-shirted his freshman year because the school had other pitchers ahead of him on the depth chart and Barrick, by his own admission, said his velocity of 81-83 mph wasn’t going to cut it.
“I needed to increase my velocity,” said Barrick, who began working through a special weight training program to do just that.
Unfortunately, he sustained an arm injury in the process and the hardthrowing right-hander instead lost velocity (71-76 mph). He fell further down the Sierra depth chart and decided he needed to make a move, so he transferred to Mendocino College before the start of the 2019 season.
“My goal was to be a starter but they had three pitchers ahead of me,” Barrick said.
Working in relief during a game against the College of the Redwoods, Barrick began his climb back with four innings of shutout ball. A few days later he threw four innings of one-hit ball against Consumnes River, and he appeared to be back at the top of his game.
“I was really hot at the start,” Barrick said. “I pitched 17 innings before I allowed my first run,” he said.
But Barrick couldn’t sustain that pace and suddenly began to struggle on the mound.
“I allowed like 15 earned runs in my next 10 innings pitched,” he said.
Barrick ended the 2019 season for Mendocino with a 3-5 record and a 4.9 earned run average.
“I was not happy at all,” he said.
Hurting his confidence even more were his struggles at the plate. An accomplished hitter in high school, Barrick didn’t bat at all during his brief stint at Sierra College.
“They only wanted me to pitch,” he said.
But when Mendocino made a coaching change between the 2019 and 2020 seasons, Barrick’s fortunes began to rise once again. The Eagles’ new head coach, Bret Ringer, the former Los Medanos head coach, got Barrick squared away at the plate.
“I went from a 2-for-19 spring at the plate to hitting .500 in fall ball,” he said. “He helped me at the plate a lot.”
Barrick’s numbers on the mound also dramatically improved during the 2019 fall ball season.
“I pitched 29 innings and had like a 2.2 ERA,” he said.
The 2020 Mendocino College spring season opened well for Barrick, who started the second game of a season-opening home doubleheader against Redwoods and worked 6 1/3 innings in a combined no-hitter that the Eagles eventually lost 3-1 as Redwood rallied to win the game in its final at-bat. He needed only 78 pitches to navigate those 6 1/3 innings while suffering the toughest loss of his baseball career.
“We actually lost a combined no-hitter,” he said.
Barrick had “average starts” in his next two outings — although one was a complete game — before facing Ohlone, the No. 1-ranked team in the state at that time.
“I shut them out for the first five innings, then allowed two solo home runs and a two-run home run in eight innings (of a complete-game effort on the road),” Barrick said.
The long ball continued to dog him in his next start when he allowed four solo home runs in another complete-game effort.
The 2020 campaign came to a screeching halt not long after. In midMarch when the Eagles were on the field waiting for Yuba College to show up for a conference game in Ukiah, Barrick said the Eagles got the bad news.
“We were ready to play and were wondering where they (Yuba) were at when we got a text that said they weren’t coming,” Barrick said. “Yuba didn’t want to risk playing (because of the coronavirus outbreak). Two days later the state announced our season would be canceled indefinitely.”
And so what should have been Barrick’s second collegiate campaign was done. He pitched 35 innings in all. Because the season ended early, Barrick and his teammates didn’t lose a year of eligibility.
Forced into an early offseason and trying to stay sharp over the summer break, Barrick traveled to Medford, Oregon, to play for the Medford Rogues, a collegiate summer team that played five games a week — Tuesdays, and Thursday through Sunday. Barrick was the designated Tuesday starter for the Rogues and he did well, posting a 3-0 record with a 3.9 ERA. He struck out 22 batters in 21 innings pitched with only four walks issued. His velocity ranged between 8487 mph.
Barrick earned his Associate of Arts degree while at Mendocino College and his career plan is to major in history and kinesiology with the goal of one day teaching and coaching at the collegiate level.
“I really love coaching,” said Barrick, who said one of the other things he’ll miss about moving to Minnesota is not being able to coach little brother Brock, an eighth-grader who is following in big brother’s footsteps as a standout athlete.
With three years of playing eligibility remaining, the son of John and Melanie Barrick of Kelseyville said he has plenty of time left to refine his skills at Bemidji, a school and baseball program recommended to him by a former teammate. He’s hoping the next three years are smoother than the last three.
“I reached out to them (Bemidji coaches) and the phone calls I had with them went well,” Barrick said. “They also liked the video they saw of me.”
Bemidji could use the pitching help, according to Barrick. The Beavers started last season 2-10 before the remainder of their schedule was canceled because of COVID-19. They went 7-39 in 2019, their last full season.
“They think they’re going to have a pretty good team (in 2021),” Barrick said. “They feel like they’re just a couple of pitchers away.”
And Barrick said he would like nothing better than to help Bemidji turn its program around.