Young Sea Warrior Maturing Over Freshman Season
By Jack Danilewicz
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Hawaii Pacific University head baseball coach Garett Yukumoto recruits “character kids” first and foremost. No small wonder then that many arrive on the HPU campus ready to make an immediate impact.
With that in mind, Wade Tamaru has already shown himself to be the prototypical first-year player for the Sea Warriors. The former Mid-Pac standout (and Aiea resident) has settled in at third base for HPU and is hitting .309 with eight RBI through his first 20 games.
“For a freshman, I think he’s very mature as a student-athlete - he displays character on and off the field,” said Yukumoto. “He exemplifies what a student-athlete should be. A lot of times, it takes a while for a freshman to become acclimated to college baseball.”
Part of the transition from high school to college sports is that a road trip really is a road trip. HPU just spent the last two weeks on the road in Utah, California and Idaho, playing a total of eight games in that span. They entered last weekend at 22-7 and are in the midst of a 15-day layoff between games before returning to action April 8 versus Dixie State College at Hans L’Orange Park in Waipahu.
There’s an old adage that when you go on the road, you have only your team-mates. That’s a good thing, in Tamaru’s view. “Having everyone around makes it easier, and we’re a close team. We’ve had the opportunity to play together since fall ball. This is my first road trip, and it’s a little tiring with all of the traveling around the West Coast - long bus rides and plane rides.”
Although Tamaru knows he’s hitting better than in high school, his biggest impact has been in the infield at third. In high school, he was a shortstop.
“He’s done really well making the transition (from short to third),” Yukumoto said of Tamaru, who has a fielding percentage of .957 through 20 games. “The ball is a little faster there (at third base) because he’s on the hot corner, but he’s done well. He brings a defensive game. He’s probably one of the better defensive players on the field.”
Said Tamaru: “Probably my defense (is my strength). I take pride in my defense.”
While competition in the ILH in high school was fierce, Tamaru has found the stakes much higher at the college level. “There’s more competition between the (HPU) team and the teams we play,” he said.“They’re all a lot stronger and a lot faster.”
Tamaru suffered a broken finger during the fall season when he was hit by a pitch. Instead of undermining his momentum, he found that the time for reflection benefited him.“I think it helped me. It gave me time to rest and take a break from things.”
Tamaru stopped short of saying baseball is a 365-days-of-the-year prospect at the college level, but he admitted that “my life is pretty much all baseball right now.”
“We do have time off,” he said,“but there’s more (time put in) than what we had in high school.”
Tamaru, who plans to be a physical therapist, would like to spend a lifetime around sports. As a kid, he played basketball and soccer, but by the time he was 10, he had already given up both to make way for more time on the baseball diamond.
“Baseball was the sport I was best at. My dad played baseball when he was younger, and my parents started taking me to UH baseball games as a kid. It was something I grew up with.”
To that end, Tamaru chose HPU largely so he could play in front of his parents, Wesley and Tina Tamaru. “I wanted to make it easier for them to watch me. I’m closest to my parents. They gave me the opportunity to go to great schools and play baseball.”
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