Coupeville Sports

Madeline Roberts paced the Wolves with three hits Wednesday, including a double. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

Another inch and they might still be playing.

Rallying in the bottom of the seventh Wednesday, the Coupeville High School softball team put a scare into first-place Cedarcrest, only to have its hopes snuffed by a spectacular diving catch.

With two runs in and two runners on base, Wolf slugger Maria Rockwell socked a ball that had base hit written all over it, only to see Red Wolf shortstop Taylor Turner make a sprinting, diving, game-ending catch with her glove brushing the top of the blades of grass.

The final highlight of a stellar day (Turner also whacked two doubles and a triple) it sealed a 7-3 victory for Cedarcrest and sent the Wolves to their seventh straight defeat.

Now 4-11 overall, 3-11 in Cascade Conference play, Coupeville hits the road for an unintended doubleheader Friday.

A scheduled home game against the Wildcats was rained out in mid-April, and the schedule makers cost the Wolves an afternoon of making money at the concession stand by rescheduling it as part of a road twinbill.

Coupeville fell behind early Wednesday, then toughened their defense and pitching. Down 7-0 after four, the Wolves shut down Cedarcrest over the final three innings behind reliever McKayla Bailey, then finally launched their offense.

Madeline Roberts led off the sixth with a line drive double over the center fielder’s head — one of her three hits. After Madeline Strasburg singled to put two runners on, Hailey Hammer launched a double to right, but a base running/communication error prevented the second run from getting home.

Then came the rally that almost was.

Bailey doubled to kick-start things, then Sydney Aparicio and Strasburg knocked in runs, before Rockwell’s hit-that-could-have-been.

“It looked like it would find grass for a single,” Wolf coach David King said. “A great defensive effort to end the game.

“We played well overall. We need to take the last two innings and build on that for our games on Friday,” he added. “We hit well in practice and we need to carry this over into our games. Once we do this we will start putting up W’s.”