07/25/2026
**Legends of the Roundtable**
The Kitsap History Museum and the Kitsap Athletic Roundtable continue to celebrate Legends from the Roundtable in our series highlighting inductees to the Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame.
This week, we feature two classmates from South Kitsap High School who went on to play for the Seattle Mariners. Jason Ellison and Willie Bloomquist played side by side at South Kitsap High School, leading their team to a state baseball title in 1996. In his senior year, Willie hit .463 with 23 stolen bases.
After high school, Jason played college ball at Bellevue Community College, excelling in the outfield. From there he was recruited by Lewis-Clark State College, where he helped the Warriors win a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics World Series Championship. Willie went on to Arizona State where he had a career .394 average and consecutive 100-hit seasons. In 1999, he was an All-American and the Pac-10 player of the year.
Jason was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 22nd round of the 2000 Major League Baseball draft, where he was a pinch runner for Barry Bonds. When Bonds was sidelined with injuries, Ellison became a regular in the outfield and was traded to Seattle in 2007. He went on to hit .283 for the Mariners. He rounded out his career with stints on the Cincinnati Reds, Texas Rangers and Philadelphia Phillies.
Drafted in the third round by the Mariners following his junior year in Arizona, Willie was called up from the minor leagues in 2002 where he began a 12-year career in Seattle. He followed that with short stays with Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Arizona, but returned to the Mariners for his final two seasons in 2014-2015.
Check out our History UnCorked program with Chuck Stark and Noah Garguile from Kitsap Athletic Roundtable that took place May 28 at the museum, now available to view on YouTube at https://youtu.be/x7RiDN-H1v0at .
