The College of the Redwoods baseball team won’t be winning a Golden Valley Conference title in year one under head coach John Downey, but that hasn’t stopped CR from playing some of its best baseball down the stretch.
Redwoods went on the road and swept the College of the Siskiyous on Friday and Saturday, extending the CR winning streak to four games and raising their season record to 11-21 with just two games to play.
“It was a full team effort to get all three games,” Downey said of the series sweep. “I’m extremely proud of the way these guys performed and fought all weekend.”
The three-game series began on Friday with a complete game shutout by former Arcata Tiger Miles Oliver to get a 5-0 win. Oliver struck out seven over nine innings, giving up just four hits and two walks in his impressive performance. Oliver leads CR with 63 innings pitched on the season, while pitching to a 6.14 earned run average with 52 strikeouts and a 5-5 record over 13 starts.
Sophomore Oscar Rudman broke up the scoreless tie in the third inning with an RBI double that brought in freshman Tanner Wright to give the Redwoods a 1-0 lead. Sophomore Justin Powell pushed the lead to 2-0 in the fourth inning with an RBI groundout that scored sophomore Seth Grammer.
Powell brought in two more with a single in the fourth inning to push the CR lead to 4-0 before Rudman singled home another run for the Redwoods in the seventh inning. CR totaled just seven hits, with Grammer, Rudman and freshman Tenoch Tapia each getting two apiece.
CR got another strong start from a former H-DNL player, with former Fortuna Husky Drew Franklin going six innings, helping CR get a 10-7 win. Siskiyous scored three runs in the third inning and four runs in the seventh, but the Redwoods’ offense overcame the big innings.
CR took a 5-3 lead in the fifth inning, with freshman Tyson Bragg hitting an RBI double before being driven in on a sacrifice fly by Grammer. Siskiyous took a 7-5 lead in the seventh, but a two-run single by Tapia put CR back on top. Redwoods added on some insurance runs before freshman Josh Crane finished off the win on the mound for CR.
Franklin went six innings and allowed three runs with five strikeouts. The CR middle relief ran into some issues before Crane took the ball and pitched three clean innings for Redwoods. At the plate, Bragg and Powell each had three hits, with Powell adding two doubles and three runs scored in the win.
CR played Saturday’s game as the home team despite being on the road due to cancellations earlier in the season but it worked in Redwoods’ favor, with freshman Yudai Ikshima walking off Siskiyous with an RBI base hit deep into left field to cap off a wild 11-10 come-from-behind win and the series sweep.
“We kinda came in half-awake in the first few innings there,” Downey said. “Once the guys got kicked in the mouth a little bit, got fired up, then they really kicked it into gear.”
CR trailed 7-1 and 10-2 before Redwoods began to mount their comeback. CR was down two heading to the bottom of the ninth before Ikshima’s heroics.
“If we were at home, here at Bomber (Field), that definitely would have been in the streets,” Downey said of Ikshima’s walk-off. “That’s probably the most fun that this team has had all year.”
Redwoods will close out the 2025 campaign on the road with a two-game set against Butte College, with games on Thursday and Friday. While CR will finish below .500 this year, Redwoods finished 10-23 in 2024 and they’ve surpassed that, currently at 11-21.
“You play the right way, you do everything the right way, winning is going to take care of itself,” Downey said. “The mission is no longer playoffs, the mission is no longer ‘how do we win the GVC?’, it’s how do we become a consistent baseball team?”
Dylan McNeill can be reached at 707-441-0526.
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