Dylan Kurahashi-Choy Foo might have believed growing up he would play baseball in the Western Athletic Conference one day.
He certainly didn’t think it would happen this way.
The 2018 Kailua alumnus played at Hawaii Pacific for a year and then went to junior college in Kansas for two years.
His first collegiate game in Division I came last season when he suited up for Tarleton State, a university in Texas with more than 14,000 students.
It reclassified from a Division II school to Division I in 2020 and is now part of the WAC, which these days includes schools from California, Utah, Washington, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico … but not Hawaii.
“Hawaii’s old conference is definitely not just Western athletics,” Kurahashi-Choy Foo said in a phone interview after practice on Tuesday. “It’s been a weird journey for me from Hawaii to Kansas to Texas. For sure, though, I’m happy with the way everything has turned out.”
The senior infielder has started 68 of 72 games over the past two seasons with the Texans and is hitting .277 with 12 doubles, seven homers and 57 RBIs.
Through 20 games this year, he’s raised his batting average 40 points from last season to .306, ranking third on the team. He’s second in RBIs with 25.
“Things are definitely way better than last year. These guys I feel like care way more than the guys from last year, and it’s why I feel like this team is going to do something special,” Kurahashi-Choy Foo said. “I just want us to win. That’s honestly the main thing, and I feel like this is a good group to do it.”
In their first two years in the WAC, the Texans went 37-71. This season, Tarleton State is 14-8 after having two of its three games canceled over the weekend against Utah Valley.
The only game they got in was played in St. George, Utah, at Utah Tech’s home field. There was too much snow on the ground to play on Utah Valley’s campus.
“We got there and it snowed like 10 inches or something,” Kurahashi-Choy Foo said. “It was ridiculous. It felt like we were in the North Pole.”
His playing career includes more than just playing junior college, Division II and Division I.
Last summer, he played close to 60 games with the Savannah Bananas, an exhibition baseball team known for their entertaining antics and eccentric rules they play by.
Games are sold out months in advance. Players would show up to the field two hours before the game to prepare their skits. The Bananas are basically baseball’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
“I guess the weirdest thing I did was they had me go on top of the dugout and take my shirt off and hold up a ninth inning sign for the fans,” Kurahashi-Choy Foo said. “There’s way more stuff they had us do — we would have to dance in the middle of an inning. If I did that stuff at home I’d definitely get teased.”
Playing for the Bananas kept Kurahashi-Choy Foo from coming home for the summer but provided memories that will last a lifetime.
He took a leap of faith four years ago to follow a friend to junior college in Kansas and leave home. He had never heard of Tarleton State until he got a phone call from one of the coaches.
Every step of his journey has begun with a leap of faith, and he wouldn’t change a thing.
“If you told me 10 years ago I would be here I never would have believed you,” Kurahashi-Choy Foo said. “I took a chance because I thought it would help. I thought this would be a better path for me. Especially with me getting my degree and the people I met here, I’m happy with the way everything panned out.”
DYLAN KURAHASHI-CHOY FOO
>> School: Tarleton State
>> Class: Senior
>> Height: 6 feet 1
>> Position: Infield
>> High school: Kailua (2018)
CAREER STATISTICS
YEAR GP-GS AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG
2022 52-49 192 40 51 11 3 5 32 .266
2023 20-19 72 11 22 1 0 2 25 .306
TOTAL 72-68 264 51 73 12 3 7 57 .277
