It’s not unusual for high school teammates to grow up playing together, but it’s not every day that a group of teammates graduates high school together some 3,700-plus miles from their hometown.
That’s exactly what happened to four recently graduated Tualatin High School baseball players. And not only did they all grow up together, they spent their junior and senior seasons living together.
Ervin Dorsett III, Glen Maduro III, Nykori Lewis, and De’quan Duncan grew up together in St. Thomas. They spent the last two years playing for Tualatin and living with Dorsett’s family. Dorsett and his parents moved to Tualatin before the start of his sophomore year. The other three players followed to start their junior years and moved in with the Dorsett family.
The boys said it felt a bit more familial living together for two years than just living with friends.
“We had that bond from back home,” Dorsett said. “It’s not like you’re having a college roommate. It was like you were living with family.”
Duncan agreed.
“It felt like brothers,” he said. “You all do the same exact stuff. It wasn’t like he had a soccer game and we had a tennis match. We just all went together. It was all of us. Nobody was left out.”
Dorsett’s father, Ervin Dorsett Jr., said the families coached the boys growing up on the islands and discussed what they’d do if there was a chance for them to go to school and play baseball far away from home.
“We always talked about the possibility of the opportunity somewhere else,” he said. “We always said anywhere we go, if you guys want to play ball somewhere else, we’ll be there. These guys took us up on the offer.”
And now all four are continuing their playing careers in college. Dorsett is off to California State University – Sacramento. Duncan, Maduro, and Lewis are staying together, as they all head to Mount Hood Community College to play ball.
The Dorsetts are already making plans to see all the boys play in college.
“Baseball has been such a part of our life for so long,” Dorsett Jr. said. “We’re pretty much just planning how we’re going to get to their games. With Erv going to Sacramento State, we have a plan on how we’re going to get down to his games. With the boys going (to Mount Hood), we’re going to try to get to as many home games as we can when it’s not cold out.”
Following the Dorsetts
Ervin Dorsett Jr. ended up in Tualatin thanks to a job offer from Portland General Electric.
“When you’re coming from the islands, the places that you think about are all on the east coast because those are closest,” he said. “There were just better opportunities out here in the northwest. I came out here, I worked through a snowstorm, and I was like, ‘Hey, I love it here.’”
His son was supposed to move for his junior year, but Dorsett took to the area so quickly that he had his son move a year early.
Dorsett Jr. and his wife, Gail Dorsett, moved to the area with their family, including an older son, who is now 24, in the Army, and stationed in Tennessee.
Dorsett III said it took him about four months to get acclimated to living in the Northwest. Baseball was a major reason he eventually felt at ease.
“I’m more of a keep-to-myself kind of person,” he said. “Meeting new friends was really hard, especially going out to a new school. Baseball is what really helped me meet new people. That’s where most of my friends are.”
When the rest of the quartet arrived a year later, they said it took a little while to feel comfortable, but they had a little bit of a leg up.
“Erv being here already definitely made it easier,” Maduro said.
Lewis said he was nervous to come to Oregon, which he had only heard of because of the Portland Trail Blazers. He said Gail and Ervin Dorsett Jr. were a big help beyond giving him a place to live for two years.
“They would always talk to me to get me ready for whatever I was going to do,” he said.
Lewis said his parent knew the Dorsetts from the island and talking to them while they watched their kids play baseball.
Duncan’s father, Starky Duncan, was in town to see his son graduate, and said the families all looked out for each other’s kids growing up, so having the Dorsetts watch his son wasn’t too unusual.
“We’re accustomed to this,” he said. “We used to coach them guys, and every time they had to go, and I couldn’t go because of work, Erv watched him for me. I had no problem. They’ve been traveling together from the time they were small.”
Food for four
Dorsett Jr. said he underestimated one aspect of having four high school athletes living with him: the food budget.
“On a conservative basis, we were spending close to $600 to $800 a week on food, especially in the off-season when they were bulking up and trying to gain weight. You have to stuff for them to consume so they could put on muscle mass.”
The three families back in St. Thomas would send financial help when they could. Dorsett Jr. still worked at PGE and then got a part-time job at HomeGoods. Gail Dorsett works full-time for Legacy Health and got a part-time job at Marshalls.
Dorsett Jr. said Gail was the key reason they made these last two years work for their expanded family.
“She is the heartbeat and lifeline of all of us,” he said. “If there was an MVP player, she would be it. She was a mother times four.”
Gail Dorsett also prepared food for the boys and tutored them when they needed help with schoolwork.
“Some of them were trying to lose weight while others were trying to bulk up, and others had dietary restrictions,” Dorsett Jr. said. “She had this task every week for three straight years. It’s mindboggling how she juggled everything.”
Differences on and off the field
All four boys said the biggest adjustment in moving from St. Thomas to Tualatin was, of course, the climate.
“It’s not tropical, for sure,” Dorsett III said. “Fall really hit. That was the most difficult time just getting adjusted to that and playing on that wet, murky playing field. I really loved it. It was different. On the islands, you don’t have that much change. It’s hot all around. It was a good challenge.”
Duncan said the colder, wetter weather made it hard to grip the ball and bat the first few months after he moved to the area. Maduro agreed and, as a pitcher, said that added some difficulty to playing in the northwest.
“At first, I couldn’t feel my fingers to grip pitches,” Maduro said. “I couldn’t feel how my arm was feeling.”
Another change was the sheer number of baseball games the athletes played here compared to what they grew up with. On the islands, they said they might play 12-15 games in a year. Here, they were playing 40-50 a year, and sometimes even more.
“There was also a huge jump in talent,” Duncan said. “I liked the challenge. It was a fun matchup, seeing how you go from here to a way different experience of baseball with a faster game pace. All it’s going to do is help you.”
He added that the increased game load also led to some initial soreness, but the four learned how to deal with the recovery as they played more. For Maduro, that meant things like icing his arm and a lot of stretching.
“We were observant of what other kids were doing,” Dorsett III said. “We could see how they recover, how they eat, their sleep schedule, and how they fit in school work.”
School was another big change for the boys. They said school in America is a lot more high-tech, as they were used to primarily using pen and paper back home. They also there were a lot more classes to keep track of compared to what they grew up with.
Dorsett Jr. said he and his wife were proud to see how all four boys dealt with such a big move and leaving behind family and friends, and then keeping up with their school work and baseball. He was also proud at how they managed to build lives for themselves in Tualatin.
“All of them are so close but each of them have their own individual friends at the school and were allowed to be individuals at the school and find their own niche,” he said. “Even though all of them play baseball, they all do different things. That was great to see.”
That ability to adapt and thrive in new, hard situations is something Dorsett Jr. felt like he has seen in all four boys and their families.
“We all come from modest financial situations and modest means but we made the most out of what we had,” he said. “That’s why we are so close as a family.”
