Norton At Home Behind Plate -- Woodinville Catcher Prepares For Final High School Outing

The batter missed the bunt. The runner from third missed the stop sign. Andy Norton didn't miss a thing.

Alas, poor Norton.

"I got the ball and turned around, and he was right there - and big," the Woodinville catcher said. "He hit me right in the face. . . . I was on the ground, and my whole lip was just blood."

But the ball was in Norton's mitt, and the runner was out.

In one split second - and split lip - two summers ago, Norton proved he was at home behind the plate, if not safe at home.

"Every time I've been collided with, I might have been knocked on my butt, but at least I held onto the ball. That's the most important thing," said the 5-foot-11, 175-pound Norton, who also has managed to keep all his teeth.

"He's pretty courageous back there," said Mic Gwilym, Norton's coach for three years at Woodinville. "If he has the ball in his hands, there's a pretty good chance the out will be made. He's not afraid to take a little bump to make the tag."

Norton, perhaps the hardest-hitting catcher in the KingCo Conference behind the plate this season, also was the hardest-hitting at the plate, leading the league with a .474 average. Among his league-leading 27 hits were five doubles, two triples and a home run for a .684 slugging percentage.

The two-time all-Crown Division catcher, who Wednesday signed a letter of innt to play baseball at Gonzaga University in Spokane, gets a final chance to display his hitting prowess when he joins nine other Eastside seniors in the annual all-state series in East Wenatchee tomorrow and Sunday.

The four-game series, which features two Class AAA teams and two Class AA-A-B teams, begins with a doubleheader tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. First-day winners and losers are paired in another doubleheader that starts at 11 a.m. Sunday.

"I'm just excited to go out and play with a bunch of guys I don't know," Norton said.

"It should be a lot of fun, and maybe I'll get some exposure to pro scouts."

Norton was not selected in this week's amateur baseball draft.

If he does nothing else in the next three years of college baseball, he wants to make sure nobody can say the same when he becomes draft eligible again after his junior year.

"I want to work on my size, getting bigger, and I'm going to have to adjust to Division I pitching," Norton said. "And I can always work on my speed. There's going to be a lot of stuff to work on."

The work is nothing new to Norton, who gave up basketball -the only other sport he played at Woodinville - after his junior year to concentrate on his best sport.

That meant concentrating on weightlifting and hitting - swing after swing, week after week, month after month of hitting.

He spent last fall and winter hitting with Edmonds Community College players.

"They helped me a lot," said Norton, who raised his high school batting average 99 points over his junior season. "My goal was just to hit over .400."

Said Gwilym: "He's the best hitting catcher we've had."

Add Norton's ability to handle pitchers - he's one of the few high-school catchers who calls his own game - his ability to throw out baserunners - he averaged almost one per game - and his leadership abilities, and Gwilym calls Norton one of the top two or three catchers he's coached at Woodinville.

"People don't run on him often," Gwilym said. "And he loves to pick a guy off first base and third base. I never questioned where he threw the ball. I did at first until I started seeing the results, which were usually positive."

The result of Norton's senior baseball season is his trip to Eastmont High School for a doubleheader tomorrow.

The culmination of three years of work on his baseball at Woodinville will be on display one last time before he graduates.

"I just want to have a good defensive game at the plate," he said. "Basically, I really don't want to fall on my face."

If he does, look for the ball in his mitt. ---------------------------

EASTSIDE ALL-STATE SELECTIONS

;

; PLAYER SCHOOL AVG. 2B 3B HR RBI ; Andy Norton Woodinville .474 # 5 2 1 17 ; Duke Ashlock Redmond .453 3 1 1 12 ; x-Geoff Huetten Woodinville .444 1 0 2 19 ; y-Josh Hamik Mount Si .429 3 1 0 5 ; Todd Hollandsworth Newport .386 4 1 2 10 ; Ryan Plughoff Redmond .377 4 1 2 16 ; Mark Pillo Liberty .438 - - - 16 ; x-Lloyd Hounsell Inglemoor .342 2 2 0 8 ;

; x-also selected as pitchers ;

;

; PITCHER SCHOOL W-L IP H BB SO ERA ; Jeff Jones Redmond 5-1 36 30 20 45 #1.57 ; Geoff Huetten Woodinville 4-1 37 30 19 30 2.65 ; Lloyd Hounsell Inglemoor 3-4 43 42 23 53 2.89 ; Randy Fjeld Liberty 6-2 52 34 26 65 2.02 ;

; # - led KingCo Conference ;

; y - Hamik, injured most of the year, had just 14 at-bats this season, but dominated the Seamount League feeder series, going 3 for 5 with two walks, then throwing out two runners from his knees while catching, and he was clocked at 88 mph while pitching. ;