Led by Murderers Row (l to r, Joey Lippo, Kyle Rockwell, Jake Pease, Ty Eck and Julian Welling) Central Whidbey beat North Whidbey 6-3 Friday. (Joe Lippo photos)
Eck delivers for the Island champs, who will face Sedro Woolley in the district championship.
Contributed by Joe Lippo.
Central Whidbey dropped the puck against North Whidbey waaaay out in Sedro Woolley to see who would go to the Finals. Also at stake, since South Whidbey had been eliminated, was bragging rights to being the best team on Whidbey.
Coach Bob Brown won his fourth straight coin toss, resulting in the Central Whidbey boys being the home team, giving Coach Brown a 1.000 average on coin tosses.
Ty Eck started the evening on the mound for the Coupeville squad, and did well, allowing few hits and only one run.
In the bottom of the first, Central Whidbey found something that had been missing from the earlier innings of past games: Their bats.
Eck started it off with a sharply hit ball right back to the pitcher, who immediately fired it over the first baseman’s head, allowing Eck to take second base.
He was advanced to third on a Julian Welling single. Joey Lippo followed with his own single, scoring Eck and advancing Welling to second. Shane Losey kept the hit parade going, scoring Welling. Bryce Payne stroked a double to deep center, with Lippo and Losey crossing the plate. Matt Hillborn came within six feet of joining Murderers Row with a double.
The rally came to an end with the final out of the first inning, and the Central boys were up 4-1.
Eck continued on the mound, pitching well and allowing only one run while retiring the rest of the batters on the side. Central followed suit with no runs, and the second inning ended with the home team clinging to a two-run lead.
Kyle Rockwell replaced Eck to start the third, and encountered some slight difficulty finding his groove while walking a batter and getting a little wild before settling down and firing strikes.
Nevertheless, the boys from the North End scratched out another run, inching closer to their rivals in the middle of the Island, closing the gap to just one run before Rockwell retired the side and chased the North Whidbey defense back onto the field.
The first batter for Central was Welling, who told this author that he was “going to concentrate on getting the bat on the ball.” He did so by smashing a solo home run over the center field fence so far that the FAA threatened to have the ball registered for flight.
Rockwell retained the ball for the fourth inning, and retired the side quickly. Just as quickly, it was the fifth inning as the Coupeville squad couldn’t make anything happen.
Speaking of making things happen, the fans from Central were starting to feel it. Just a little.
With the aforementioned fifth inning upon us, Payne came to the mound, and thoroughly confused the batters with a combination of speed, curves, change-ups and other assorted high stinky cheese, sitting them down as fast as they came to the plate.
North Whidbey had a lone base runner, who was stranded as Jake Pease gloved a fly ball to right field for the inning-ending out.
In the bottom half of the frame, that same guy, who had struggled a bit in his last two trips to the plate, hit a ball into right for a single. Then Welling hit a shot down the third base line, which had Pease blowing through Coach Brown’s signal to hold up, then pulling up as he realized what he did halfway to home, then deciding to go for broke at the behest of the screaming fan base.
He was safe at home as the throw hit him in the back before it could reach the catcher. The inning ended just like that, and Central was three outs away from victory.
Payne wasn’t out of pitches, so he stayed in until his 20th pitch, which resulted in two outs and nobody on.
Saving him for Saturday’s game, he was pulled and replaced with Lippo.
Lippo walked the first batter he faced, then buckled down and started throwing good strikes. The North Whidbey batter smacked a slow roller to first, and Losey came off the bag to field it. Lippo wisely covered first base, and gloved the last out of the game on the toss from Losey.
The Central squad is now headed to the Finals, and has earned Island wide bragging rights, at least until next season.
Coupeville Sports 
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