KELSEYVILLE – Dustin Thaxton played for two contenders and one pretender during his senior year at Kelseyville High School. From the depths that were the Kelseyville football team in 2011 to the heights of reaching the postseason in basketball and baseball, the multi-talented Thaxton had the best seat in the house the entire way.
A wide receiver and defensive back on a football team that barely avoided a 0-10 season, a deadly 3-point shooter in basketball and a bonafide staff ace in baseball, the 17-year-old proved himself to be an athlete for all seasons.
Thaxton, whose next stop is Santa Rosa Junior College where he will pursue his baseball career, is the Lake County Record-Bee”s Athlete of the Year for the 2011-12 high school sports season.
While Thaxton”s senior season will be better remembered for his exploits on the hardwood and on the baseball diamond, he did play football on a team that barely avoided setting a school record for futility. The Knights lost their first nine games before beating an also-winless Lower Lake club in the season finale for both teams. He caught only two passes for 55 yards and touchdown, but also intercepted two passes and had one sack as a defensive back.
“I was injured for a good portion of the season (left quad pull). I played maybe five games,” Thaxton said. “We had too many injuries. The complete mood of the team was different from my junior year (the Knights went 7-4 and made the playoffs in 2010). It was more of a circus (in 2011).”
The Knights had a chance to prevail in a handful of games but were shut out of the win column until the season-ending Lower Lake game.
“We were up for that game,” Thaxton said of a 36-18 Kelseyville win. “We knew we had a chance. We didn”t want to go 0-10.”
During the winter sports season, Thaxton was one of two main cogs for a Kelseyville varsity boys” basketball team that posted a county-best 20-7 record. He averaged 14.6 points a game, which was fifth best in Lake County, and his county-leading 93 3-point field goals rank him among the county”s all-time leaders.
“One of the finest pure shooters I”ve ever seen,” Kelseyville coach Scott Conrad said, and Conrad, the county”s all-time career scoring leader, should know.
“Guys like that don”t come around very often,” Conrad said of Thaxton as well as teammate Max Huff. “Dustin shot us back into a lot of games when we weren”t going well to start. You can”t make all those 3s and not be a good shooter.”
Thaxton said the best part of his senior season, apart from hitting 93 treys, was battling Middletown, the eventual league champion. The two teams met three times during the season and split their two league meetings. Middletown finished 12-2 to Kelseyville”s 11-3 in a down-to-the-wire league race.
“Since my freshman year, the games with Middletown are always pretty good,” Thaxton said. “We”ve always been neck and neck with Middletown in basketball.”
In fact, it was a Kelseyville-Middletown league meeting toward the end of Thaxton”s junior year, a 55-54 loss at Middletown, that provided the toughest moment in his high school career.
“John-Wesley (Davis) hit a reverse layup with two seconds left to beat us,” Thaxton said. “We were fighting for the league title, and when he hit that shot … it was over just like that.”
As a hard-throwing right-hander for the Kelseyville varsity baseball team, Thaxton posted a 6-2 record with 75 strikeouts in 58 2/3 innings. The Knights once again challenged for a league title and once again just missed, finishing one game out the NCL I standings before qualifying for the playoffs as an at-large team, just as they had done in basketball.
While Thaxton earned All-North Central League I first-team honors in basketball, he was named co-most valuable player in baseball even though the Knights were the runner-up to St. Helena in the league standings.
“Most people know him for his pitching because he struck out all those guys, but he was probably the best defensive infielder in our league (at shortstop when he wasn”t pitching),” Kelseyville basketball coach Lou Poloni said.
In a league race that went down to the wire, Thaxton made the biggest impact for the Knights, primarily because of his mound work.
“I know we don”t get there without Dustin, with what he did on the hill for us,” Poloni said.
While Thaxton”s fastball did reach the mid-80 mph range during the season, he wasn”t just a fastball pitcher, according to Poloni.
“He didn”t have to rely on it, there were other pitches he could get you out with and he did,” Poloni said.
Thaxton said he”s confident throwing any one of three pitches — hard slider, fastball (clocked as high as 86 mph) and curve ball.
“It”s usually slider, fastball,” Thaxton said of his out pitches.
His best game of the season accounted for one of his two losses, a 1-0 defeat at Fort Bragg.
“I had my best stuff in that game,” Thaxton said of a league game where he his pitching line was seven innings, only three hits, no earned runs, 13 strikeouts and no walks. Unfortunately, the Knights backed him with only two hits of offense.
“Coach told me he that was the best he had ever seen me pitch,” Thaxton said.
Thaxton helped his team at the plate as well, racking up 24 hits (second-best on the squad) and a team-leading three triples.
“Neither he or Max had the year (at the plate) they had a year ago, but when you look at our schedule, we were facing some pretty good teams the whole year,” Poloni said. “I guess our numbers could have been better, but we didn”t have the Potter Valleys of the world on our schedule.”
Looking ahead to college, Thaxton said he hasn”t settled on a major yet. He does want to keep playing baseball until someone tells him he can”t.
“I would love to keep playing past Santa Rosa,” Thaxton said of the possibility of one day playing for a four-year college or even in the minors.
“Getting paid to play would be alright with me,” he said.
Thaxton, a 2.8 student at Kelseyville, has two brothers, Wesley Thaxton, 16, and Kai Young, 8, and a sister, Maddy Young, 7. His mom, Angelina Arroyo, is Vice Chairwoman of the Habematolel Pomo Tribe of Upper Lake, operators of Running Creek Casino in Upper Lake.
