Coupeville Sports

Wolf catcher Breeanna Messner comes up firing and guns down a potential stealer. (John Fisken photo)

“Two different Coupeville teams showed up this week.”

That was Coupeville High School softball coach David King’s feelings after his squad dropped three games in two days, but with wildly different results.

The Wolves, now 4-11 on the season, got bounced, hard, in a doubleheader loss at Sultan Monday. The 14-4 and 9-0 losses were over quickly and painfully.

By contrast, CHS rebounded sharply Tuesday, and while the Wolves were edged out 5-3 by visiting Archbishop Thomas Murphy, it was a game that came down to the final at-bat and had its share of positives.

“This game was a 180-degree reversal of how we played the day before in Sultan,” King said. “We came ready to play, we played better defense and we came ready to hit.

“We had two errors that cost us, but the effort was there.”

The Wolves crunched  11 hits, with Madeline Roberts, Breeanna Messner and Emily Coulter each rapping out a pair.

Madeline Strasburg whacked a triple, while McKayla Bailey, Hailey Hammer, Tiffany Briscoe and Emily Licence all chipped in with singles. Coupeville almost got more, but ATM pulled off a couple of stellar running catches to deny the Wolves.

A day earlier, it was Coupeville’s gloves that hurt them the worst against the Turks.

“Defensively this was probably our low point on the season,” King said.

The Wolves dropped two infield pop ups, almost lost a third one before making the juggling catch, dropped two more balls in the outfield and consistently took bad angles on fly balls all game.

“It’s just tough when you have to get extra outs in an inning throughout the game,” King said.

In the midst of the meltdown, however, freshman third baseman Licence made a dazzling play that brought a moment of peace to her frazzled coach.

“Emily made a great play on a slow grounder to her left, a slap type hit from a left handed batter,” King said. “Emily charged and took the correct angle towards the pitching circle. She fielded it, made the transfer on the run and threw the runner out by a step.

“It reminded me of many of the plays Omar Vizquel used to make for the Mariners when he played.”