The Major League Baseball season has started, but ball was already well underway for the Grays Harbor College Chokers. That softball team plays in the Northwest Athletic Conference and their schedule got going back in February, with almost 20 games now under their belts. At 1st base and occasionally pitcher, the Chokers have an up and coming Quesnel kid on the roster: Kaitlyn Doucette.
So far in her sophomore season she has a .360 batting average with three homers, 10 runs batted in, and attained 19 total bases in 25 at-bats through her first nine games of the campaign.
“Kaitlyn is an extremely talented athlete and can change a game in the circle or with an at-bat. We are looking forward to great things from her this season,” said Chokers coach Jake White.
Her ascension in softball started at a very early age. She first joined up at age five, and by the time she was 13 she already saw softball as the personal ladder she wanted to climb. Since Quesnel didn’t have the player population for its own travel team, that meant trying out for the Prince George Thunderbirds program. She made the team.
“It was a big commitment for myself as well as my parents, having to travel back and forth from PG four times a week and then heading to Vancouver each weekend for tournaments,” Doucette told The Observer. “I played for the T-Birds for four years and in those four years I got to experience playing in many high level tournaments, BC Summer Games as well as the Western Canadian Championships. I started to love the sport more and more and I knew that playing at the next level in college was something I always wanted to do.”
In 2021 when she graduated high school, her next step was the vaunted White Rock Renegades program, which has won more provincial championships than any other team in B.C. and more national championships than any other team in Canada. That exposure led to a college offer for Doucette.
“I started getting more offers for schools than I thought,” she said. “For my freshman year I committed to Bethany Lutheran College in Minnesota to start my collegiate career in the NCAA.”
There were no days off, with the sport and the schooling blended together, but she said she felt no regrets even though it was a tough adjustment.
“My freshman year we ended up winning our conference tournament which led me to my first college ring,” she said. “Bethany was an amazing experience for me and I am so thankful for the opportunities I had there, the people I met and the opportunities it has given me to succeed at my new college at Grays Harbor.”
It was also difficult that she was so far from her personal support system, and in a foreign country. But she had good people around her anyway, she said, and faraway love is still love. The option to transfer to the west coast was part of getting closer to home.
“Moving the second time down to Washington was much easier, I think being a few years older and knowing more of what to expect was extremely helpful,” she said. “The education level was a big difference. As a college athlete, when you have free time away from the fields you are studying, it takes some time to get used to but when you get into a routine things move more smoothly.”
She credited the “team atmosphere and coaching staff” in Aberdeen, Washington as big parts of her choice. Subliminally, perhaps it was also a factor that the team name, Chokers, derives from the hefty history of manual logging; many a Quesnel resident will have personal experience setting chokers.
Her education stream is business and accounting.
She is also, at this stage of her career, getting into coaching. During the off-season she is working with Craig Horswell at his Prince George-based Elite Baseball Development program. She also gives private lessons, and is happy to work with Quesnel youth.
“During my off-season I do come back home to Quesnel, I spend a great deal of time with my family and friends when I am not training,” she said.
She also feels a passion for the next wave of local athletes who might be able to have an easier path into scholastic sports by following her example.
“I try to put as much of my knowledge of softball back into the Quesnel Minor Girls Association,” she said. “Quesnel has done a lot for me and I am truly honoured to represent Quesnel, B.C., Canada here in the United States.”
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