Tenino senior Emily Baxter, the Beaver softball team’s ace pitcher, signed her National Letter of Intent with Dominican College softball team on Thursday at Tenino High School.
Baxter tormented opposing batters last season as a junior, leading the state with 208 strikeouts and three no-hitters, according the MaxPreps. One of the no-hitters was during a district tournament game where she fanned 21 batters.
She finished with a 1.09 ERA across 116 innings and 19 games to earn 1A Evergreen League Defensive MVP honors, as well as a spot on The Chronicle’s and The Olympian’s all-area teams.
On her travel team, 18U Freedom Gomez, this past summer, Baxter sat down 235 batters and tossed two no-hitters with a 1.25 ERA in 152 innings of work.
Now she’ll take her cannon of a right arm to Division-II Dominican College in Orangeburg, New York, located about 30 miles north of New York City.
The Chargers compete in the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference (CACC), where they placed second out of 14 teams with a 20-6 conference record in 2021. They advanced to the conference quarterfinals.
Before Baxter tests her mettle at the collegiate level, she returns with the Beavers this spring as one of the top pitchers in the state. The Beavers were eliminated in the third round of the district tournament last season, going 1-2 at the tourney and finishing the season with a 9-8 overall record.
