Coupeville Sports

      Ben Etzell struck out 11 and picked a runner off second Wednesday. (Shelli Trumbull photos)

Drew Chan, the lone Wolf senior, crunched a single in his final at-bat on the CHS diamond.

There is still hope.

A lot of great journeys take a backward step at the beginning, before finding the promised land.

Bill Gates bombed with Traf-O-Data before hitting it mega-huge with Microsoft. Walt Disney was fired for “lacking imagination and having no good ideas.”

The key is to have a short memory and bounce back, something the Coupeville High School baseball team will need to do.

After losing an epic pitcher’s duel 2-1 to visiting Lynden Christian Wednesday in their district playoff opener, they will be back on a baseball field in less than 24 hours.

The Wolves will face Nooksack Valley, a team they beat early in the season, in a 1 PM loser-out game at Pipeline Fields in Blaine Thursday.

Win that one, and they return to Blaine Saturday for another loser-out game. Win that and they qualify for tri-districts and will play in the 3rd/4th place game later that afternoon.

If they get pitching like they had Wednesday, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Junior Ben Etzell was inspired, striking out 11 Lync hitters and picking a runner off second when he teamed with Drew Chan for a dandy play that caught a straying Lynden Christian runner flat-footed.

Unfortunately, Lync hurler Truman Van Dalen was one slim pitch better on the day, getting out of a sticky jam in the bottom of the seventh despite his defense’s best efforts to lose the game for him.

After a lead-off walk to Kyle Bodamer, Aaron Trumbull laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to move pinch runner Wade Schaef into scoring position. Then came the first of two huge breaks for Coupeville.

Freshman pinch-hitter Cole Payne lofted a fly that seemed like a sure second out, until two Lynden infielders ran into each other, causing the ball to pop out of one of their mitts.

After a force out for the second out, Schaef was trapped midway between second and third and should have ended the game, only to have the Lync third baseman drop the ball.

Van Dalen refused to cave however, even with an overflow, pro-Wolf crowd screaming, striking out Kurtis Smith with the tying and winning runs sitting at third and second.

From start to finish, it was all about the battle between Etzell and Van Dalen, with both teams only scoring in the second.

Lynden Christian got a two-run double in the top of the inning, before the Wolves got one back on a booming double from Jake Tumblin and the latest in a never-ending string of key RBI hits from Kyle Bodamer.

From that point on, it was a fast-moving, pitcher-friendly game that, as baseball will often do, refused to play out according to the script.

But the season lives on for the Wolves (10-11). Teams and players come back from setbacks, even one as emotionally draining as this loss was.

R.A. Dickey once played for the same AAA team for seven years without a sniff of the major leagues. In 2012, he won the National League Cy Young.

Baseball takes some and it gives some. The key is to come back the next day and play until the final out. And then do that the next day and the next and the next.