Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.co – McKinleyville’s Tate Saso is the 2026 Humboldt Sports Baseball Player of the Year.

By Ray Hamill — In North Coast baseball, it was the year of the Panthers.

That’s not to suggest it wasn’t also a good year for some other teams in the H-DNL, but when the dust had settled on the 2026 season, one team clearly stood head and shoulders above all others here on the North Coast.

And they did so in multiple ways.

McKinleyville won the Big 5 championship and followed that with a third straight Charles Lakin Tournament title, and they had eight players receive all-league recognition.

Now, adding to those accolades, the McKinleyville boys are the 2026 Humboldt Sports Baseball Team of the Year, while also getting the nod for our Player of the Year and Coach of the Year.

Choosing a player of the year, as usual, was no easy task, considering not just the obvious talent from around the league, but also the depth of talent on the Panthers roster alone.

But no one played a bigger role than sensational sophomore Tate Saso, who has wasted no time establishing himself as the best high school player on the North Coast.

And that makes him our choice for player of the year, which follows the Big 5 MVP award he also recently won.

But that’s not all for the Panthers.

Head coach Mike Dobrec is also our choice for coach of the year.

Dobrec has a wealth of top talent at his disposal, benefiting from a McKinleyville Little League program that has been second to none in the county for much of the past decade and is producing quality players year after year.

But, along with assistant coaches Cameron Saso, Jeremy Sargent and Ryan Baxter, he has done an exceptional job putting his players in position to succeed, keeping them grounded and preparing them for the games that matter, including the past three Lakin tournament finals.

This year, they were ready to go for the first two crucial conference matchups against rival Eureka — two wins that ultimately won them the Big 5 — and played with a composure that suggested they were not going to let the opportunity slip away.

And even though they dropped the third Big 5 game against Eureka, they took their most lopsided defeat of the season in their stride and came back as strong as ever the following game, a testament to the coaching staff and their influence on the squad.

The job the coaches and players did this season cannot be overstated.

Because of their success during the regular season, the Panthers found themselves in a highly-competitive Division 2 for the North Coast Section playoffs and showed they could hang with some of the best teams in the section, something we don’t often see from H-DNL schools.

Just as impressive, the Panthers played like a team, something Dobrec always pointed to after games.

In addition to the always dangerous Saso, several other players on a very deep lineup found ways to step up in different games, and if one player had an off day their teammates always seemed to find a way to fill the void.

For the season, Saso averaged .416 at the plate and had 25 RBIs, nine doubles, two triples and five home runs.

He also had one of the most reliable gloves in the entire HDN at shortstop and made his presence felt on the mound, finishing 5-1 with an ERA of 2.31 and 37 strikeouts in 42.1 innings.

It’s difficult to find a weakness in his game and the most remarkable part of his MVP season is that he achieved all of this in just his second year of high school ball.

“Tate played a huge role for us,” Dobrec said after Saso was named Big 5 MVP. “He played shortstop and held down our defense all year. He had a terrific year, and he’s going to get better, and to watch him over the next two years is going to be pretty remarkable.”

Saso is our player of the year from a deep and talented pool of candidates, showcasing once again the quality of players the area continues to produce in baseball.

Eureka’s Ty Crawford also received some serious consideration for the award and deserves an honorable mention, as does St. Bernard’s Tyler Hinrichs and Ferndale’s Tanner Pidgeon, who shared this year’s Little 4 MVP award, as well as Arcata’s Tanner Kees and St. Bernard’s Michael Manzi, who arguably were the best two catchers in the H-DNL and also had good springs on the mound.

McKinleyville junior Hunter Carper also gets an honorable mention, along with teammate Joe Tanno, the latter of whom might just have been the best pitcher in the league this spring.

There were several other players who also enjoyed impressive seasons, many of whom were recognized in the Big 5 and Little 4 all-league teams.

St. Bernard’s Matt Tomlin also received some serious consideration for our coach of the year award — as usual — and arguably did one of his best jobs yet from the dugout while guiding a very young Crusaders team that featured 14 freshmen and sophomores combined to an undefeated league campaign.

The Loggers also enjoyed a great spring as they pushed the Panthers all the way to the final day of conference play in the race for the Big 5 championship, and both St. Bernard’s and Eureka deserve an honorable mention in our team of the year category.