Peninsula baseball honoring late teammate Wanaka, playing with purpose

In so many ways, though he’s absent physically, Caleb Wanaka remains a senior leader for the Peninsula High baseball team.

His No. 9 jersey hangs in the dugout for every Seahawks game. Teammates wear bracelets cajoling them to “Play Like Wanny.”

Even the presence of the team’s shortstop and leading hitter, junior Payton Knowles, traces to Wanaka, who would have been one of eight seniors on this team had a traffic accident not taken the life of the 17-year-old third baseman last June.

“We always talk about adversity with the kids in our program,” Peninsula coach Michael Johnson said. “These kids just play with a different type of motivation. They’ve played with a little bit more meaning and purpose.”

Wanaka isn’t the only former Peninsula player having an influence on this group. Just about a month before the season began, 2021 grad Jake Moore also passed away, and his jersey hangs beside Wanaka’s for each game.

Both remind the Seahawks of the fragility of life.

“He was like a brother to me,” said Knowles, who transferred to Peninsula from Gig Harbor after Wanaka’s accident. “One of the best friend’s I’ve ever made. We’ve been playing ball together since we were 7 and 8, starting with the Stingrays. Ever since then, our friendship flourished.”

When it came time to go to high school, Knowles could have chosen to start at Peninsula. But, he said, Gig Harbor felt like the better fit to play multiple sports.

A football quarterback, Knowles wanted to play there in the fall before moving to baseball in the spring. Even this past fall, Knowles had to change positions at Peninsula to get on the field, playing receiver and safety with senior Seahawks quarterback Jake Bice running at QB.

Knowles likely will move back to the quarterback position for his senior season this coming fall, and he’ll still be honoring his friend when he does.

“Coach (Ross) Filkins was just so great to me,” Knowles said. “He let me wear No. 9 for football.”

That tribute remains a few months away, however. The immediate task at hand for Knowles and the rest of the Seahawks is to fulfill the promise of the regular season the team has churned out in the face of adversity.

The Seahawks are 9-3 and atop the standings.

The SSC is not where Peninsula’s eyes are set, however. These Seahawks feel a sense of destiny that they hope will take them deep into the postseason next month.

“We’ve had a lot of games where we’ve started behind,” senior Landon Pate said. “But we’ve come back. Whenever you look around, look in the guys’ eyes, I’m not surprised at where we are.”

Peninsula will play some playoff baseball just a year after they went 6-10-1 playing a 4A South Puget Sound League schedule a year ago thanks to Covid-19 alterations. With three non-conference games left in the regular season, Peninsula is 12-5 overall this spring.

The last time the Seahawks had this kind of success was three years ago, when they went 19-7 and made the 2019 state tournament quarterfinals. Wanaka was a freshman on that team, and would have been the only returner from that squad – after two pandemic years – to have the chance to make the playoffs.

“He’s the last freshman to make varsity,” Johnson said.

The remaining eight seniors on this 2022 squad didn’t make the jump to the varsity level until what would have been the 2019 season – the year that Covid erased all spring sports – and Knowles was still an eighth-grader.

Now a junior, Knowles boasts a .491 batting averaging, has 28 hits this spring and 18 RBI.

“We’re 16 guys on a team. Sixteen guys who play for the same reason,” Knowles said. “We play to honor Caleb and Jake because they don’t get to play anymore.”

“If you had looked around, Caleb was the one,” Tate said. “He’s the one you knew, if anyone was going to, would be playing in the Major Leagues. He’s the one that was special.”

So the Seahawks play in 2022 to honor their fallen leader.

“A lot of people don’t know this, but Caleb was supposed to be at my house that day (of the accident),” Knowles said. “But he hadn’t seen those friends in a while. When I spoke at his celebration of life, I knew right then that I was home. We had to carry on his legacy and I was the person to do it.”

Corrections: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Landon Pate. It also misidentified the year and round of Peninsula’s 19-7 team and listed seven seniors on the roster, not eight.

This story was originally published April 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.