Coupeville Sports

   Ian Smith (right) imparts wisdom to one of his successors, Aaron Trumbull, while coaching American Legion ball in 2012. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

Homer-happy Erik King takes the field in 2010. (Amy King photo)

The base-knocks never stopped landing.

Look back at the last three decades of Coupeville High School baseball and no team has put together an offensive run to equal what the 2010 squad accomplished.

They weren’t the most successful Wolf team in terms of record or postseason accomplishments.

Didn’t make it to state. Didn’t win a league title. Finished at dead .500 with a 12-12 mark.

And yet that last sentence is deceiving.

The reality is Willie Smith’s squad played superb ball at times, but faced a truly brutal year as the smallest school in a tough 1A/2A Cascade Conference.

The Wolves finished fourth in the league standings at 8-9, a full four games ahead of South Whidbey, the only other 1A league school playing baseball at the time.

King’s used to sit the hardball season out back in the day, leaving the Wolves and Falcons to tangle with the five 2A schools.

Archbishop Thomas Murphy and its rotating band of future college players and MLB draftees went 22-4 and finished 3rd at state in the 2A tourney, while Cedarcrest finished 15-5.

While the 2016 Wolves snapped a 25-year dry spell and won the 1A Olympic League title, it’s hard to really compare their three foes (Klahowya, Port Townsend, Chimacum) to the razor-tipped romp through a no-man’s land Coupeville “enjoyed” in its old league.

Having survived the trek, CHS split four postseason games, beating Lynden Christian 6-4 and Nooksack Valley 10-9, while falling to Meridian 7-1 and (in what became the season finale) Seattle Christian 8-7.

Meridian went on to claim 3rd at the 1A state tourney.

But while their record, as hard-earned as it was, may not be an all-time best, the Wolves were a force to be reckoned with at the plate.

Coupeville had five All-Conference players in ’10, with infielder JD Wilcox landing on the First Team and Ian Smith (P), Chase Griffin (C), Chad Brookhouse (INF) and Erik King (OF) Second-Teamers.

The Wolves were a veteran group that year, with seven seniors in their lineup (though Jason Bagby missed a huge chunk of time) as one era closed out.

That summer a group of Central Whidbey Little League players like Ben Etzell and Morgan Payne won a state title and they joined the high school program almost en masse the next year.

And promptly got beat on for awhile by the 2A powers and their junior and senior-heavy rosters.

But in 2010, Coupeville claimed as many grizzled vets as any team, and they swung the bat like no Wolf team in memory.

The stats are uncanny, frankly.

The top four single-season highs for hits by an individual CHS player in the last 30 years all came that season, and the Wolves hit for average and power.

Wilcox, a certified star, was exactly that, but Coupeville also got career-best work from Brookhouse, a tough-nosed journeyman, and a surprising power show from a slightly unexpected source.

King is not a big, burly dude, but he had exceptional bat quickness and a well-honed eye and used both to pace the team in home runs and slugging percentage.

League titles are not to be sneezed at, and state trophies (like the 3rd place one nabbed by the ’87 CHS squad) live forever, but don’t sleep on the 2010 Wolves.

They blew up the scoreboard and should be remembered for all they accomplished.

Take a look at their plate stats, then tip your hat to the greatest offensive show the prairie may have ever seen.

The stats:

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