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Archive for the ‘Baseball’ Category

Don’t hurt them … too late!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , on April 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Aiden Crimmins comes up firing while playing the outfield Wednesday afternoon. (John Fisken photo)

Josh Welshans got a workout.

The Coupeville High School assistant baseball coach is the team’s scorebook guru, and by the time he was done recording things Wednesday, his fingers might have been just about ready to fall off.

Bashing the ball with glee, the Wolves sent 15 batters to the plate and scored 11 runs against visiting Port Townsend … in just the first inning.

By the time it was done, CHS had polished off the RedHawks 22-0, keeping alive its slim hopes of retaining its Olympic League crown.

Now 4-2 in conference action, 9-7 overall, the Wolves still have an uphill battle, trailing Klahowya (6-0, 8-3) by two with three league games left on the schedule.

The first of those arrives Friday, when Coupeville travels to Chimacum (2-4, 4-6).

Beat the Cowboys for a third time this season and the Wolves clinch at least second-place in the four-team league.

They’ve already nailed down a playoff spot after Wednesday’s win, sitting four games up on Port Townsend (0-6, 0-10).

CHS put the game on ice before all of the fans had settled into their seats, using five hits, four walks and a smattering of RedHawk errors to mount their epic first inning.

The big blows came courtesy Clay Reilly, who thumped a triple, and Jake Hoagland, who smoked a double.

Hunter Smith, Dane Lucero and Matt Hilborn added base-knocks in the first and the rout was on.

The second inning was no better for the beleaguered RedHawk pitching staff, as Coupeville sent another 13 hitters to the plate, with eight of them eventually coming around to stamp yet another run on the (non-working) scoreboard.

Coupeville coach Chris Smith did everything humanly possible to keep the score from ballooning into the stratosphere, using everyone on his bench and going station-to-station for much of the game.

But with everything clicking — offense, defense and pitching — it was hard not to finish with a lopsided final score.

A particular bright spot for Coupeville was seeing Hunter Smith return to the mound.

The junior has been hampered by back problems which curtailed his ability to pitch, but Wednesday he was feeling strong and tossed two strong innings before handing the ball to his bullpen.

Smith had two base-runners but picked one of them off of first, while whiffing three RedHawks.

Lucero retired all six hitters he faced across the third and fourth inning, picking up four more strikeouts, before Jonathan Thurston closed the game.

The slender senior walked the first hitter he faced in the fifth, before closing on an impressive note with three straight K’s.

Coupeville finished with 11 hits, led by Reilly, Hilborn and Smith, who had two apiece. Hoagland added a double, while Lucero, Score, Julian Welling and Nick Etzell collected singles.

Score paced the Wolves with four RBIs on the afternoon.

 

To see more photos from this game, pop over to:

http://www.johnsphotos.net/Sports/2017-Coupeville-Baseball/20170426-vs-Pt-Townsend/

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Let’s not dwell on it…

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , on April 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Jake Pease fires in a pitch. (John Fisken photo)

We’re gonna keep this short and sweet.

Sort of the opposite of the game itself.

Unable to muster a hit against a more experienced South Whidbey squad, the Coupeville High School JV baseball team fell hard Monday afternoon.

The 13-0 loss, which drops the Wolves to 2-6 on the season, went on for quite awhile without much good happening for the guys in red and black.

“One of those games where it’s about learning … cause you hope they learn,” said CHS coach Mike Etzell.

With the Wolf varsity off-Island playing a league game, Coupeville had a straight-up JV squad on the field, while the Falcons, whose varsity was idle, were able to use some swing players.

It showed at times as South Whidbey wielded heavy bats and, other than a few walks here and there, thoroughly dominated.

Coupeville did get seven runners on, mustering six walks and a fly ball from Shane Losey which was dropped for an error.

Jacob Zettle and Kyle Rockwell led the way, with two walks apiece, while Ulrik Wells and James Vidoni also eked out free passes.

Coupeville used three pitchers, with Elliott Johnson, Jake Pease and Gavin Knoblich all seeing mound time.

If nothing else, it was live game action, always preferable to practice, and the sun was out the entire afternoon.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

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Wolves pull out a thriller!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , on April 24, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Jonathan Thurston, seen here last season, got the win Monday as Coupeville pulled out an extra-innings thriller. (John Fisken photo)

Hope lives.

Refusing to lose, the Coupeville High School baseball squad rallied time and again Monday, eventually pulling out a wild 6-5 win at Chimacum in 10 hard-fought innings.

The victory lifts the Wolves to 3-2 in Olympic League play, 8-7 overall, and hands them sole possession of second-place with four conference games left on the schedule.

Coupeville sits two off of Klahowya (5-0, 6-3), while Chimacum (2-3, 4-5) and Port Townsend (0-5, 0-7) round out the race.

The Wolves, who still face an uphill climb to defend their league title, return home Wednesday to face the win-less RedHawks, before trekking back to Chimacum Friday.

Monday afternoon CHS never trailed, but also could never quite pull away from the Cowboys until the third extra inning.

Having seen a 4-1 lead evaporate, and then having exchanged runs with their hosts in a tense ninth inning, the Wolves snatched the momentum for good in the tenth.

Dane Lucero, who was hit-less up to that moment, led off the top of the tenth with a resounding double, then moved to third and came around to score on wild pitches.

With the lead in hand, Wolf hurler Jonathan Thurston slammed the door shut.

After giving up a one-out walk to put the tying run on base, Thurston promptly cut that runner down on a fielder’s choice, hitting shortstop Hunter Smith for the force at second.

He then closed the game by inducing a ground-out, with the throw safely landing in first-baseman Kory Score’s glove.

“Good game, very big win for us in our league standings,” said CHS coach Chris Smith.

The Wolves had jumped out to a 4-1 lead, getting a run in the second, two more in the third and another in the fourth.

The game’s first tally came courtesy Joey Lippo, who laced an RBI single to plate Julian Welling, who had bashed a double.

Welling was right back at it an inning later, this time driving in Taylor Consford and Clay Reilly with his second base-knock of the game.

In the fourth, Matt Hilborn doubled and came around to score on a well-placed single by Consford, Coupeville’s starting pitcher.

Chimacum played catch-up, though, netting a run of its own in the fourth, then knotting things up at 4-4 with two more in the fifth.

Lippo kept the Wolves alive, however, gunning down a runner at the plate while wandering in center field.

It was his second strong throw of the game, coming after he doubled a runner off of first moments after snagging a fly ball in the first inning.

Coupeville had a golden, and somewhat surprising, opportunity to reclaim the lead in the sixth, but it wasn’t to be.

Consecutive two-out singles from Nick Etzell, Hilborn and Hunter Smith juiced the bags, but the Cowboys escaped unscathed when they found an inning-ending strikeout at just the right moment.

Both teams battled scoreless through the sixth, seventh and eighth, then traded runs in the ninth.

After recording his third hit of the day, Hilborn scored for Coupeville on a ground-out off the bat of Reilly, but a crucial error stung the Wolves in the bottom of the inning.

Which merely set the table for Lucero to be a hero and send his squad back to the ferry wearing smiles.

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This one hurts!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , , on April 22, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   Wolf catcher Taylor Consford had two hits Friday, but Coupeville fell to Klahowya. (John Fisken photo)

Slip-sliding away.

Coupeville’s chances of repeating as Olympic League champs in baseball took a shot to the ribs Friday, and while its hopes aren’t dead, they’re getting closer to flat-lining.

A rough fifth inning in which the Wolves surrendered five runs with two outs allowed host Klahowya to break open a close game and make off with an 11-6 win.

The loss, the second in as many games against the Eagles this season, drops Coupeville to 2-2 in league play, 7-7 overall.

That leaves the Wolves in a second-place tie with Chimacum (2-2, 4-4), two-and-a-half games off of Klahowya (5-0, 6-3).

Port Townsend (0-5, 0-7) is firmly stuck in the cellar.

CHS still has time to rally, with five league games left on the schedule, but to keep the Eagles from regaining the title they won in 2015, the Wolves will absolutely have to finish with a better record.

By taking the first two games of the three-game season series, Klahowya holds a tiebreaker over Coupeville should they finish with identical records.

The Wolves jumped out to an early lead Friday, scoring a run in the first on a double by Hunter Smith and an RBI single by Clay Reilly, but their hosts never blinked.

Klahowya rallied for three in the bottom half of the opening inning, then plated another run in the second to build a 4-1 lead.

Coupeville twice cut the margin back to one, first at 4-3, then at 5-4 heading into the bottom of the fourth.

The Wolves picked up two runs in the third — Taylor Consford drilled a double to score Matt Hilborn, then came around himself when the Eagles booted a ball hit by Reilly.

Kory Score reached on an error in the fourth, moved up on a steal and a single off of Joey Lippo’s bat, before shooting across home on a passed ball and the game looked like it would come down to a single play.

Then, things kind of fell apart.

After answering with their own run in the fourth, the Eagles exploded for a ten-batter, five-run fifth to bust the game wide open.

All the damage came after there were two outs, as a deadly mix of walks, Wolf errors and a balk or two conspired to doom the visitors.

Coupeville rallied for two in the top of the seventh, on RBI singles by Consford and Reilly, but it wasn’t enough.

The Wolves did manage to pile up 10 hits, with Hilborn and Consford collecting two apiece, but Klahowya hurler Dylan Zuber managed to spend most of the afternoon getting out of trouble while suffering minimal damage.

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“Big Game James” erupts!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , , on April 21, 2017| Leave a Comment »

   James Vidoni had three hits and three RBI Friday, propelling Coupeville to a 12-8 win. (Melissa Losey photos)

Beautiful day, beautiful win for the Wolf JV.

The prairie was hot, but James Vidoni was hotter.

The Coupeville High School slugger crunched three hits Friday, including a game-breaking two-run single, to spark the Wolf JV baseball team to a 12-8 win over visiting Klahowya.

Coming on the rarest of days, when fans shed nearly every last layer of clothing and openly scorched their milky-white skin under a rare object in the sky we were told is called “the sun,” Coupeville erupted for nine runs during a 15-batter third inning.

The win, coming a day after a narrow loss at South Whidbey, lifts the Wolf JV to 2-5 on the season.

Facing off with an Olympic League rival for the first time this year — neither Chimacum or Port Townsend have JV squads — Coupeville rapped out nine hits.

Starting pitcher Elliott Johnson punched out four singles on mom Mimi’s birthday to pace the attack, while Jake Pease and Gavin Knoblich added singles.

But it was Vidoni who lit the fuse.

“That was great to see James hit like that,” said CHS coach Mike Etzell. “Really got everyone on the team going.”

Vidoni started by launching an RBI double over the head of the Klahowya left fielder in the bottom of the second, plating Knoblich to knot things up at 1-1.

Jump to the bottom of the third and the Wolves were trailing 2-1.

Johnson had whiffed four Eagles, but a seeing-eye single into the gap snuck through, allowing the visitors to (briefly) recapture the lead.

Then the game took a hard turn, and a positive one for Coupeville.

After juicing the bags with no outs on a Johnson single and walks to Pease and Kyle Rockwell, the Wolves started dropping runs at a rapid pace.

Johnny Carlson and Knoblich eked out bases-loaded walks to make it 3-2, before Vidoni cranked a single.

Rockwell scored easily, while Carlson, practically running out of his shoes, pulled off a nifty hop-skip-and-jump ballet move at the plate to avoid a possible tag.

As he dodged the catcher’s mitt, the decently-sized and rabidly pro-Wolf crowd sucked in its collective breath, then exploded in delirium, shock mixing with respect for Carlson’s surprisingly nimble toes.

Two more bases-loaded walks, earned by Cameron Dahl and Shane Losey, stretched the lead to 7-2, before Johnson collected an RBI single, his second base-knock in the inning.

Not to be outdone, Pease lobbed his own two-run single into center to cap the nine-run explosion, effectively sealing the deal for the Wolves.

Klahowya scraped together four runs in the fourth to tighten the game a bit, but Johnson and Pease, who came on in relief, combined to blunt the Eagle attack the rest of the way.

Johnson and Knoblich added RBI singles for Coupeville’s final two runs, while the Wolves played often-inspired defense behind their tag-team pitching staff.

Rockwell pulled off a pair of sweet defensive gems at first base, throwing out a runner headed into second off of a grounder into the hole and later snagging a ball down the line for an unassisted put-out.

Losey erased another Eagle by remaining alert at all times.

A Klahowya runner successfully stole second in the sixth inning, but came off the bag without calling time and Losey, who had taken the throw from Dahl, sprinted up from behind, tagging him out before he realized his mistake.

Coupeville got something from all 11 players on the day’s roster, with Jacob Zettle, Seth Weatherford and Gavin Straub chipping in to the effort.

“Just a good team win for these guys,” said an elated Etzell as he congratulated his players afterwards.

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