Submitted photos – Redwood Giants 12-year-old Kaiwi Sharp will play for the Northwest Region 13U team at the USA Baseball Champions Cup in Cary, North Carolina, this weekend.

One young Humboldt County player is turning some heads well beyond the Redwood Curtain after earning a place on the 2023 USA Baseball Northwest Region 13U team.

Eureka 12-year-old Kaiwi Sharp will travel this week to compete in the USA Baseball 13U Champions Cup in North Carolina.

The prestigious tournament starts on Thursday and runs through Monday.

The local standout, who also plays for the Redwood Empire Little League and the Redwood Giants 12U travel team, was selected from a pool of 3000 players for one of two Northwest Region teams to travel to compete in North Carolina.

Sharp was one of 36 players to be chosen from the six-state region after multiple tryouts that began with his participation in the National Team Identification Series (NTIS) in May. 

This program is designed to identify top talent across the country’s six regions.

He will compete with some of the top young players in his age group from Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Sharp arrived at the tournament venue in Cary, North Carolina, on Wednesday along with his family, including father and travel team coach Charlie Sharp.

And the venue impressed both father and son.

“It is by far the nicest baseball facility I’ve ever been at,” Charlie Sharp said. “It’s pretty amazing.”

According to his father, the young Sharp is “super excited” to have been chosen for the team.

Kaiwi is a seventh-grader at St. Bernard’s and also plays basketball and football.

But baseball is his favorite sport and he hopes to someday play both collegiately and for an MLB team.