Last month, Marin’s travel baseball team made its way to Cooperstown, N.Y., where the program’s two teams, the Reds and the Blacks, competed in a tournament for players under age 12 alongside 61 other teams from Mexico and the United States. The tournament is the nation’s largest and among the world’s most decorated youth baseball events, and this year a West Marin seventh grader was a star of the show.
Dylan Jenkins, a 12-year-old from Inverness who attends West Marin School, was an outlier in skills-based competitions held to spotlight exceptional players, from a homerun derby to double-play drills and a contest for quickest player around the bases. Mr. Jenkins came home with the plaque for “Fastest Guy,” breaking the Cooperstown U-12 record for the fastest player to round the bases—running the diamond in 12.74 seconds and beating the previous nine-year record by .08 seconds.
During eight games spanning a week, he rotated positions on his team, shining as a pitcher and in his new favorite position: centerfield. As a base runner he stole 27 bases, the most in the tournament; the second-place player stole just 13. The Blacks finished ninth in the tournament and only lost two games of the series, and those to nationally ranked teams. As a pitcher, Mr. Jenkins raked in five strikeouts in the span of just two innings, and in the team’s penultimate game, against Tri Valley Baseball, he had a diving catch in the outfield. “Straight out of ESPN,” said his mother, Carolyn Placente.
As Mr. Jenkins’s successes mounted at Cooperstown, word of the “mustache guy” began to circulate around the tournament. (Mr. Jenkins stands six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a mustache.) Although Mr. Jenkins has spent plenty of innings pitching in Little League, he said he prefers the centerfield position. “I just feel more dominant there,” he said. “I only wanna play centerfield from now on.”
He said the guidance of his travel team coach, Tom Connors, was partly responsible for his personal successes this summer. “He’s like the Mr. Miyagi of coaching,” Mr. Jenkins said, adding, “You won’t win unless you are a team. I learned that the hard way in Little League All-Stars. Everyone individually on the team was amazing but we didn’t play as a team and that’s why we didn’t win.”
From the drills to the field sizes, there is much that separates Little League from Marin Baseball, said Mr. Connors, who founded the summer program in 2017 with Mike Firenze, the head baseball coach at Redwood High School. The travel program is dedicated to preparing youth for high school baseball and creating a supportive and fun environment. Mr. Connors said this year’s team had the best performance he’s seen since the program was founded.
Mr. Jenkins’s excitement for baseball is apparent in his long-term goals for the sport: After he graduates from West Marin School, he aims to enroll at Redwood High, drawn by its premier baseball program and facilities. When asked about college, he names Louisiana State University without skipping a beat. His father, Josh Jenkins, grew up in Baton Rouge and his uncle was the caretaker for the L.S.U.’s tiger mascot. The family has been L.S.U. fans for generations.
After the Cooperstown tournament ended, Mr. Jenkins and his family, along with another family from West Marin Little League, Orion Springer-Lich and his parents Dave and Pam, made their way down to New York City, where they saw the Yankees play the Mariners. Mr. Jenkins said he found the Yankees stadium a bit too flashy: he prefers Oracle Park.