Coupeville Sports

 Shortstop CJ Smith and the Wolf defense played flawless ball behind Ben Etzell Monday. They just couldn’t score any runs for him. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

Ben Etzell was nearly flawless Monday, but still lost.

Despite retiring the final 17 batters he faced, eight on strikeouts and the final one on a wild popup he chased face-first into the fence to snag, the Coupeville High School senior hurler was let down by his offense.

When the Wolves stranded the tying run at third in the bottom of the seventh, all Etzell could do was take his mitt and move on to the next battle.

The 1-0 loss to visiting Granite Falls meant his squad had scored a grand total of one run in his last three starts.

The loss hurt Coupeville’s pursuit of South Whidbey for the #1 seed among 1A schools in the 1A/2A Cascade Conference.

The Wolves are 5-7 in league play, 6-7 overall, while the Falcons, who upset Archbishop Thomas Murphy 1-0 Monday, are 8-5 in the conference and have opened a 2.5 game lead.

Coupeville has six to play (two more against Granite, a makeup game against Lakewood and three against Sultan) and own the tiebreaker, having taken two of three against South Whidbey to open the season.

But if they have any hopes of playing catch-up, they will have to find a consistent offensive flow.

With back-to-back wins over 2A Lakewood, it looked like they had. And they did hit the ball Monday, but just right at defenders with waiting mitts almost every single time.

Coupeville didn’t get its first base-runner until #9 hitter Josh Bayne whacked a two-out single to left center in the third inning.

After that, all they could muster until the seventh was a Kurtis Smith single, and he, like Bayne, was stranded at first.

With the stands filling up a bit in the seventh with the arrival of CHS softball players whose practice across the street had just ended, the Wolves seemed set to pull-out a comeback win.

“Do you smell that? I smell a rally!!,” bellowed center-fielder Wade Schaef, and Coupeville immediately responded.

Aaron Trumbull led off by crushing a pitch into the wind in right field that the Granite outfielder misplayed, then skipped in to second while the Tigers tried to track down the loose ball.

But it wasn’t to be, as Aaron Curtin, still battling a shoulder injury, was unable to get a bunt down to advance Trumbull.

Korbin Korzan hit into a fielder’s choice to move the runner up, but with two outs, sophomore Cole Payne went down on strikes to end Coupeville’s lone threat of the afternoon.

Granite got the only run it turned out to need without hitting the ball out of the infield in the first.

The Tiger lead-off hitter beat out a slow chopper to short, then Etzell plunked a batter.

With catcher Jake Tumblin’s throwing hand bandaged after a recent injury, he and Etzell got crossed up on how many fingers were being shown and what pitch was called, and a passed ball moved the runners up.

With the infield back, a fielder’s choice to shortstop plated what, at the time, seemed like an insignificant run.

After that it was lights out for Etzell, who surrendered a bloop single to right in the second, then went off on his run, going one batter shy of two complete runs through the Granite lineup.