LAKE COUNTY >> When Logan Barrick crosses the stage on Friday night to receive his high school diploma, he can look back on a sports career that raised the bar for generations of Kelseyville and Lake County baseball players who will follow in his rather significant size 13 footsteps.
The same is true for Natalie Karlsson, who graduated late last month from Upper Lake High School. Barrick and Karlsson not only had great senior seasons, they had record-breaking ones that erased long-standing county single-season marks.
In Barrick’s case, it was 13 wins as a starting pitcher for the Knights. In Karlsson’s case, it was 737 points scored.
Until the 2016-17 sports season, the record for most wins by a county pitcher in one year was 12. Gary Burns, also a Kelseyville standout, went 12-2 in 1988, a record matched by Barrick last season with an identical 12-2 mark. Karlsson broke a record that was nearly as old and one that many county graybeards thought might never fall, that of Clear Lake’s Jenny Schaal, who scored 710 points during the 1989-90 basketball season. Until this season, Schaal was the only county player to reach the 700-point plateau.
The single-season records set by Barrick and Karlsson came within the framework of fantastic careers. In three full seasons at the varsity level in baseball, Barrick posted a 30-6 record with 27 complete games out of 36 games started, including seven shutouts. In 237 1/3 innings, he struck out 236 batters and walked only 48. No player has won more games in his career dating back through 1980. His 13 wins is also the most by a county pitcher to go undefeated in a single season, surpassing the 10-0 of Clear Lake’s Jordan Chana in 2015.
Karlsson, a four-year starter at the varsity level in basketball, finished her career with 1,846 points, second only to another Upper Lake great in Laura Wilder (1990-94), who graduated with 1,897. Both Karlsson and Wilder easily could have topped 2,000 if circumstances had been different. Karlsson wasn’t asked to take on the bulk of the Cougars’ scoring load until her junior season while Wilder sat out a lot of fourth quarters because of the lopsided nature of many of Upper Lake’s wins back in the early 1990s (those teams reached the NorCal finals twice).
Barrick and Karlsson won’t have much time to dwell on their past accomplishments as they move forward with their academic and athletic pursuits at the next level. Barrick is headed to Sierra College in Rocklin while Karlsson’s next stop is College of the Siskiyous in Weed.
Both athletes are also finalists for the Record-Bee’s Athlete of the Year award, which will be named in the next few weeks.
