Marc Aparicio, seen here hanging out during a JV game, has the Wolf varsity sitting atop the 1A Olympic League at 3-0. (John Fisken photo)
You can admit it, you didn’t see this one coming.
I certainly didn’t.
Only the most diehard of diehard fans, the ones who approach every game with an unblinking faith which borders on mania, would have seen the Coupeville High School baseball team toppling Klahowya Tuesday.
And yet that’s exactly what happened.
Riding strong work on the mound from senior CJ Smith, key hits in the late going and an unflappable defense which bounced back from its few small errors to immediately make spectacular plays, the Wolves blanked the visiting Eagles 2-0.
The win, the fourth in the last six games for CHS, lifts it to 6-7 overall, and, more importantly, a flawless 3-0 in 1A Olympic League play.
That puts the Wolves a game-and-a-half up on Klahowya (1-1, 10-3) and two up on Chimacum (1-2, 3-7) with six league games to play.
Port Townsend (0-2, 0-8), which visits Whidbey Thursday, sits in the basement.
So, how did Coupeville topple a Klahowya squad that came in with seven wins against 2A schools, a team that had rung up 99 runs and not come close to being shutout this season?
By believing in themselves.
“We played smart baseball,” said Coupeville coach Marc Aparicio. “We hit the ball hard and even when we weren’t scoring, we held in there.
“What I was most impressed with was our ability to stay focused,” he added. “At this level, you make some errors, but we recovered, didn’t throw it away and came back with big plays to erase those errors.”
The two teams battled through a scoreless game until the bottom of the sixth, when the Wolves used aggressive work at the plate and on the base-paths to crack things open.
Freshman Matt Hilborn beat out an infield single to kick things off, then Hunter Smith reached on a bunt single.
Except … after much complaining from the Klahoywa bench, the umps changed their mind and said Smith was actually out.
The moment seemed to swing momentum back to the Eagles, but the Wolves refused to play along.
CJ Smith ignored the commotion and promptly drove Hilborn home, then came around to score himself when Julian Welling whacked an RBI single two batters later.
Klahowya opened the seventh by getting its first runner on, but Coupeville refused to break, closing out the inning, and the game, with flawless defensive work.
As he basked in the victory, Aparicio praised his defense, one through nine, with a special shout-out to the work outfielders like Clay Reilly and Ethan Marx put in.
“Our outfield was very strong all the way around today,” he said.
First-baseman Kory Score also pulled off an unassisted double play, snaring a liner and catching a straying runner off of first, while Hilborn slapped on a note-perfect tag at third in which “he tagged the guy right in the face.”
