Just eight miles and the Willamette River separate the home plates of Oregon State University’s Goss Stadium and Linn-Benton Community College’s Dick McClain Field.
That proximity has resulted in a strong connection between the two baseball programs. The Beavers have added a number of former Linn-Benton players – often pitchers– to their roster in recent years, while every member of LBCC’s current coaching staff has either played or worked for Oregon State baseball.
“Well, they’re right there,” OSU Head Coach Mitch Canham said of Linn-Benton. “It makes it easy for us to go see those guys.”
Currently, two former LBCC Roadrunners are on the Beavers’ current pitching staff: junior Ethan Kleinschmit, who entered the 2026 season as the team’s top pitcher behind ace Dax Whitney, and Connor Mendez, a junior in his first year with OSU.
Last season, Kleinschmit played alongside former Roadrunners Kellan Oakes and Chase Reynolds – also pitchers – as the Beavers advanced to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. Oakes was drafted in the ninth round of the 2025 MLB Draft the following summer.
Every roster Canham has led as head coach at Oregon State has included at least one former Roadrunner.
“Communication is really high right there,” Canham said. “We’re able to see them. And they do a great job developing a lot of the guys up in the Northwest – all those programs, they do a great job.”
Although Kleinschmit never played with Mendez at LBCC, their paths to Corvallis have some similarities. “He’s my neighbor right now,” Kleinschmit said. “We’ve hung out a little bit and (I’ve) just kind of helped him to tell him what it’s like, and just how it’s a little bit different from Linn-Benton to here.”
“I mean, I was in his shoes last year with Kellan Oakes and Chase Reynolds, who both came from Linn-Benton,” he said, “so kind of a cool little line we got going.”
Both Kleinschmit and Mendez won Northwest Athletic Conference Championships with LBCC in their lone seasons as Roadrunners. Kleinschmit was named to the all-tournament team in 2024 after a 6.1-inning performance in the championship round where he allowed two earned runs and struck out eight. Mendez won tournament MVP in 2025, capping a season with a 0.69 ERA across 12 starts and 78 innings played.
“The best way I can put it is, I can call on a coach and say, ‘Hey, this guy’s a Beav,” LBCC Baseball Head Coach Andy Peterson said of what makes players such as Kleinschmit and Mendez stand out. “But you got to check all the boxes, and that’s being a good person, (getting) good grades, good families, hard workers, your teammates love you. Maybe it has to be a mix of all of that for a guy to go over there, let alone how hard they throw or how far they hit it – how that’s almost secondary.”
Peterson played for Oregon State from 2013 to 2014, where he was a Pac-12 honorable mention at second base as a junior. He’d go on to spend two years in Corvallis as an undergraduate assistant.
He then replaced Ryan Gipson – another former Beaver letterwinner and now an assistant coach at Oregon State – as Linn-Benton’s head coach in 2018. Peterson’s Roadrunners have won the NWAC Championship in three of the last four seasons.
Peterson credited former OSU Head Coach Pat Casey, as well as his head coach at Santa Ana Junior College, Don Sneddon, for developing him in a winning culture.
“And everything we do is to be a champion,” Peterson said. “Do you brush your teeth like a champion? Do you use the restroom like a champion? Do you walk the bag like a champion? That’s always been engraved in me.”
Peterson said he admires the way the Beavers run their baseball program. “We have a lot of the same thinking, (the) same drills that we do is stuff that Coach Casey used to do with us,” he said. “It’s not that much different. We’ve always kind of had that same connection. It’s a lot of very good people that we surround ourselves with.”
The two programs have played each other in fall scrimmages in the past, although Peterson said the two teams didn’t in 2025. He said he’s in contact with the Beavers coaches often: “I go to all the games, and they’re good buddies,” he said. “I’ll follow along with the score of their games during our games. … But even getting home after one of our games, and we might lose or something, it’s like, alright, the Beavs have to win now.”
Peterson rattled off a list of his proudest moments regarding former players, from former LBCC and OSU outfielder Jacob Melton getting his first MLB hit in 2025 to watching Oakes get out of a bases loaded jam in the postseason.
“I love hanging out and golfing with the boys and fishing,” he said. “Some of those former guys that are around, getting to hear their stories of how it’s different, how it’s the same – getting to see them play in front of big crowds and how they handle it. It’s just awesome.”
“Those are our kind of guys, too,” Canham said of programs such as Linn-Benton, “you know, that aren’t afraid to play in a little bit of precipitation or the sunshine, whatever is coming our way on a given day.”
