Coupeville Sports

Ben Etzell delivers the high, hard cheese. (Shelli Trumbull photos)

Josh Bayne sneaks behind a runner. A runner who needs to pull his dang pants up.

Drew Chan leads a saucy tango.

Kyle Bodamer (10) and Randy Payne race to retrieve a fouled-off ball.

It’s been five years.

You have to go back to 2008 to find the last time Coupeville High School hosted a home baseball playoff game. And while the 2-1 defeat at the hands of Lynden Christian Wednesday will sting for awhile, just earning the chance to be there was an accomplishment.

The 1A Wolves won five of their final six regular season games, all against 2A schools, and held off arch-rival South Whidbey to claim the game. The Falcons had to hit the road and got bounced 16-8 at Mount Baker.

By the bottom of the seventh Wednesday, with the Wolves staging a final rally, the stands were full and a rapidly-growing overflow crowd spilled out in all directions.

The sun was out. The sky was blue. There was nary a gust of wind on the prairie for the first time this spring.

This is the way CHS sports should be.

And, even in defeat, Coupeville plays on, with a 1 PM Thursday loser-out game in Blaine against Nooksack Valley.

Hope lives. Always.

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      Ben Etzell struck out 11 and picked a runner off second Wednesday. (Shelli Trumbull photos)

Drew Chan, the lone Wolf senior, crunched a single in his final at-bat on the CHS diamond.

There is still hope.

A lot of great journeys take a backward step at the beginning, before finding the promised land.

Bill Gates bombed with Traf-O-Data before hitting it mega-huge with Microsoft. Walt Disney was fired for “lacking imagination and having no good ideas.”

The key is to have a short memory and bounce back, something the Coupeville High School baseball team will need to do.

After losing an epic pitcher’s duel 2-1 to visiting Lynden Christian Wednesday in their district playoff opener, they will be back on a baseball field in less than 24 hours.

The Wolves will face Nooksack Valley, a team they beat early in the season, in a 1 PM loser-out game at Pipeline Fields in Blaine Thursday.

Win that one, and they return to Blaine Saturday for another loser-out game. Win that and they qualify for tri-districts and will play in the 3rd/4th place game later that afternoon.

If they get pitching like they had Wednesday, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Junior Ben Etzell was inspired, striking out 11 Lync hitters and picking a runner off second when he teamed with Drew Chan for a dandy play that caught a straying Lynden Christian runner flat-footed.

Unfortunately, Lync hurler Truman Van Dalen was one slim pitch better on the day, getting out of a sticky jam in the bottom of the seventh despite his defense’s best efforts to lose the game for him.

After a lead-off walk to Kyle Bodamer, Aaron Trumbull laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to move pinch runner Wade Schaef into scoring position. Then came the first of two huge breaks for Coupeville.

Freshman pinch-hitter Cole Payne lofted a fly that seemed like a sure second out, until two Lynden infielders ran into each other, causing the ball to pop out of one of their mitts.

After a force out for the second out, Schaef was trapped midway between second and third and should have ended the game, only to have the Lync third baseman drop the ball.

Van Dalen refused to cave however, even with an overflow, pro-Wolf crowd screaming, striking out Kurtis Smith with the tying and winning runs sitting at third and second.

From start to finish, it was all about the battle between Etzell and Van Dalen, with both teams only scoring in the second.

Lynden Christian got a two-run double in the top of the inning, before the Wolves got one back on a booming double from Jake Tumblin and the latest in a never-ending string of key RBI hits from Kyle Bodamer.

From that point on, it was a fast-moving, pitcher-friendly game that, as baseball will often do, refused to play out according to the script.

But the season lives on for the Wolves (10-11). Teams and players come back from setbacks, even one as emotionally draining as this loss was.

R.A. Dickey once played for the same AAA team for seven years without a sniff of the major leagues. In 2012, he won the National League Cy Young.

Baseball takes some and it gives some. The key is to come back the next day and play until the final out. And then do that the next day and the next and the next.

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Be there, or these guys will be by later to “talk.” (Shelli Trumbull photo)

Shut the town down, Martha!

Lock the doors early today and get yer patootie to Robert Sherman Field by 4 PM. It’s your civic duty.

Whether you’re one of the 14 survivors of Sideways Freezing Rain Day earlier this season (I still have flashbacks) or haven’t attended a Coupeville High School baseball game since they built the new field out on the prairie, today is your moment.

Playing in the loaded Cascade Conference, where five of the eight schools are 2A and Coupeville is the smallest of the 1A trio, the Wolves have rarely had the chance to host home playoff games.

Today, against Lynden Christian, that changes.

This baseball team, by and large the same group of guys who won a little league state title in 2010, is charging.

Five wins in its last six games and having put a scare into defending 2A state champ Archbishop Thomas Murphy, which had to pull out its big gun to escape Whidbey with a win last visit, they are the team of destiny.

As Wolf assistant coach Chris Tumblin (the man in charge of the 2010 little league team) said, “It’s a state championship that someone has to win. Why not Coupeville?”

Why not, indeed.

It all starts today, at home. In front of their fans. With lone senior Drew Chan taking the field, his field, for the final time in his stellar career.

Be there. Don’t deny yourself the chance to be part of destiny.

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“Does it LOOK like I enjoyed THAT?!?!” (Shelli Trumbull photos)

“Oh well, chicks dig scars…”

“You da man, Joey!!” (John Fisken photo)

In every baseball game, there are big moments and small moments.

Monday afternoon the brain-busting moment came when Coupeville’s #9 hitter, sophomore pitcher Josh Bayne, went yard, lofting a ball over the left field fence with one unexpected burst of power.

That play got a lot of deserved attention, but we also want to take a moment to acknowledge a play that went under the radar, but should be noted.

Junior catcher Joey Edwards, who swapped his South Whidbey blue and white for Wolf red and black and made an immediate impact as a football player in the fall, is a backup on the diamond squad.

And since he’s playing behind Jake Tumblin, he hasn’t gotten a lot of time on the field.

But when he does get out there, he’s a hustler, a lunch pail kind of guy who does what needs to be done.

Monday, when he pinch-hit for Aaron Curtin, what needed to be done was take a pitch off his body, suck up the pain and give Coupeville a runner on base at a key time.

It was a small moment in the game, but it was a baseball player making a baseball play, selflessly doing what had to be done for the good of the team.

One more reason Wolf fans are glad Edwards wears the colors of the home team now.

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