1A Olympic League | Coupeville Sports

Posts Tagged ‘1A Olympic League’

Second time, not as exciting as the first!!

Posted in Softball, tagged 1A Olympic League, Chimacum, CHS Wolves, Katrina McGranahan, Softball on April 27, 2015| Leave a Comment »

McKayla Bailey, seen here earlier this season, struck out two and had one of Coupeville’s few hits at the plate in a tough loss Monday. (John Fisken photo)

A week-and-a-half ago, the Coupeville High School softball squad pulled off a weird, wild, walk-off 22-21 victory over Chimacum.

Monday, a combination of poor hitting and worse defense doomed the Wolves, allowing the host Cowboys to garner some revenge with a 15-2 win.

The two teams will settle the matter May 5, when Chimacum comes back to Whidbey for the finale in the three-game series between the Olympic League rivals.

The first meeting was a back-and-forth affair.

Monday’s rematch, which dropped Coupeville to 4-7 overall, 3-2 in league play, was decidedly more one-sided.

Chimacum scored four in the first, four in the second, took a breather with a two-spot in the third, then put the game on ice with a five-run fourth.

The Wolves were unable to answer, striking out eight times — including five in a row at one point — while scratching out just a handful of hits.

“We had little bats on the ball today and it for sure set the tone,” said CHS coach Deanna Rafferty. “Our offense was nowhere near where it was last time we played Chimacum.”

McKayla Bailey, Katrina McGranahan and Hailey Hammer all collected singles, with McGranahan pilfering a stolen base.

Bailey, trying to get something started, had poor luck with the umps, who twice called her out on close plays.

The first time came on an attempted steal of second, with the other a play at the plate.

Wolf hurlers McGranahan and Bailey combined for four strikeouts, but their defense let them down more than once.

“The game today was riddled with errors and incomplete plays made by our defense and the pitching suffered as a result,” Rafferty said. “Once our defense goes down, our pitchers get stressed and it shows.”

Coupeville will look to rebound Wednesday, when Klahowya visits Whidbey.

It’s the middle game during a week in which the Wolves will play all three of their league foes, with a road game at Port Townsend Friday wrapping a busy schedule.

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Freshman fuel rainy day romp!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged 1A Olympic League, baseball, CHS Wolves, Hunter Smith, Julian Welling on April 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Julian Welling held Port Townsend to two hits over four innings, earning his first win as a varsity pitcher. (Johgn Fisken photo)

Freshman Julian Welling held Port Townsend to two hits over four innings Thursday, earning his first win as a varsity pitcher. (Johgn Fisken photo)

Get in. Get out. Move on.

That was the mantra for the Coupeville High School baseball squad Thursday, as it drilled visiting Port Townsend 12-2 on a cold, windy, wet afternoon on the prairie.

A win is a win, especially one that snaps a two-game losing streak, and Wolf coach Willie Smith was happy to take it. He just wasn’t all that impressed by it.

“Uninspired” is how he described a win that improved Coupeville to 7-6 overall, 3-1 in Olympic League play.

“A game where you’re just glad to be done with because it’s hard to garner any positives out of a game like this,” Smith said.

Then, giving it some thought, he did latch on to one positive — a fairly easy win over a weaker opponent allowed him to play his young guns for most of the day.

With freshmen and sophomores dominating the lineup, he was able to rest his older stars.

That could be useful as the Wolves head into the final two weeks of play.

With a non-conference game Friday at Meridian now cancelled, Coupeville has five regular season games remaining. All are league contests, and two are against undefeated Klahowya.

With that in mind, Smith held out his big three pitchers (Aaron Curtin, Aaron Trumbull and CJ Smith), opting to use Julian Welling on the hill instead.

The freshman responded, earning his first varsity win by tossing two-hit ball over four innings.

Hunter Smith closed out the game, called early thanks to the ten-run mercy rule, with a nearly flawless fifth.

Welling’s fellow frosh walked the first batter he saw, then closed out the game one-two-three.

At the plate, Coupeville combined eight hits with nine Redhawk errors to pile up their runs.

While he was grateful for the help, Willie Smith would have liked to have seen his hitters take more control of the game.

“We didn’t really tear the cover off the ball,” he said. “Yes, the pitching was not good, yes, the velocity was below average, and yes, we need to be better at the plate.

“We are just not getting good wood on the ball right now and that is a bit concerning, but these guys are good hitters and are capable of putting together better at-bats than what we’ve been doing.”

The Wolves scored one in the first (an RBI single from Hunter Smith), two in the second (a two-run single from CJ Smith), three in the third (five errors and an RBI single from Welling) and three more in the fourth (keyed by Clay Reilly’s RBI single).

Coupeville capped off a game in which it scored in every inning by tacking on three more in the fifth, with Hunter Smith and Trumbull notching RBI singles.

In addition to Welling and the younger Smith brother, the Wolves got solid work from freshmen Joey Lippo and Cameron Toomey-Stout and sophomore Jonathan Thurston.

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Outwit! Outplay!! Outlast!!!

Posted in Softball, tagged 1A Olympic League, CHS Wolves, Lauren Rose, Monica Vidoni, Softball on April 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Monica Vidoni had a sensational over her shoulder catch to highlight Coupeville's 8-2 win Thursday. (John Fisken photo)

Monica Vidoni had a sensational over her shoulder catch to highlight Coupeville’s 8-2 win Thursday. P.S. — The weather wasn’t this nice. (John Fisken photo)

It ended the only way it could. With a bang.

Exploding from behind the plate, freshman catcher Lauren Rose whipped a dart down the third base line, the softball exploding into third baseman Hailey Hammer’s glove an instant before the mortified Port Townsend runner could even think about twitching her body back towards the bag.

An emphatic “you’re out!” from the ump, and an afternoon of complete domination, one in which the Coupeville High School sluggers owned their visitors from first pitch to last play, ended with an 8-2 victory.

The win lifted the Wolves to 4-6 overall and an especially spiffy 3-1 in Olympic League play.

And it was domination.

Complete and utter domination on an afternoon that started with vicious wind, moved through a torrential downpour and ended with a hazy sun beaming down on fans who aren’t going to feel dry or warm for at least three days.

But hey, when you win, who cares about the weather?

Especially when the field, prepared with a loving touch by groundskeeper/softball dad Mike Lodell, held up so beautifully even the umps had to shake their heads in wonder.

Plus, as long as it was pouring liquid from the skies, Coupeville was pounding away on offense, scoring six runs in the first to ice the game even before the fans lost all the feeling in their extremities.

The Port Townsend pitcher had control problems in warmups and never was able to fix them once the game actually started, a fact the Wolves took full advantage of.

Tiffany Briscoe kicked things off by reaching on an error, then taking a second base on an overthrow.

The hot-hitting Katrina McGranahan thumped an RBI double that was twice as impressive for slicing right through the heart of the wind storm, before CHS poured it on by jumping on Redhawk miscues.

Hope Lodell eked out a bases-loaded walk to make it 2-0, then two Wolves scored on the same wild pitch and the rout was on.

McGranahan added another RBI single in the second to stretch the lead to 7-0, then the game took an odd turn.

Coupeville actually rapped out more hits in the latter innings, but stopped scoring.

Singles from Robin Cedillo and Rose in the fifth went for naught, and the Wolves juiced the bags in the sixth on hits from McGranahan and McKayla Bailey plus another walk by Lodell, but the rally sputtered out.

Still, they didn’t need it, as sharp pitching from McGranahan, who stayed in control even while flinging a frequently-wet ball, and stellar play from her defense, carried the day.

Rose teamed up with Bailey to gun down a runner on a bang-bang play.

With runners at the corners, Rose fired towards second, but Bailey cut off the ball (as planned), catching the lead runner in no man’s land between third and home.

Her eyes firing off lightning bolts at the Redhawk runner, Bailey baited her into lunging for home, then calmly zinged the ball to Rose, who slapped on the tag with authority.

That play might have been the best of the afternoon, most afternoons.

On this day, however, right fielder Monica Vidoni topped it with a sensational running catch over her shoulder that ended one of the few Port Townsend threats.

The tallest player on her squad, Vidoni needed every last one of her inches to bring the ball down, sending the Wolf parent section into an explosion of cheers.

“I’m so glad she’s six-foot, six-one, six-two, whatever Monica is,” said Coupeville coach Deanna Rafferty. “She reached up there and made a great play.”

As the post-game celebration raged on, with sweet-fielding second baseman Jae LeVine bouncing around in glee and first baseman Kyla Briscoe high-fiving this reporter as she exited, it was a good day to be a Wolf.

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You’re giving Willie Smith angina!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged 1A Olympic League, baseball, CHS Wolves, errors kill, Klahowya, Willie Smith on April 22, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Aaron Curtin delivered a thunderous first-inning hit and some strong pitching, but the defense behind him killed Coupeville’s chances Tuesday. (John Fisken photo)

Don’t believe (all) the hype.

Klahowya may be undefeated and the #1 ranked team in 1A, but Coupeville High School baseball coach Willie Smith has seen a lot of teams in his time, and he knows the Eagles can be toppled.

Just not Tuesday.

Playing what Smith termed their “worst defensive game of the season,” the Wolves booted balls all around the field all afternoon, allowing Klahowya to run away with a 10-2 victory.

The road loss dropped Coupeville to 6-6 overall, 2-1 in Olympic League play, while Klahowya went to 11-0, 2-0.

With seven regular season games left to play, including two more against the Eagles, the Wolves have plenty of time to work out their defensive issues. And get back on the winning track.

“The good news: they are a team that we can definitely beat if we play like we are capable of,” Smith said. “I know, every coach says that, but we are really right there.

“For us, this game showed that we need to be ourselves and not try to do something different just because we are playing a “really good team” and that’s not my definition of them,” he added. “We have three games before we play them again and if we come and play like we’ve shown we can play then they are very beatable.

“I think we got too caught up in the hype of Klahowya and forgot who we were; our boys have seen them, we know how good we can be, and my expectation is that it will be a completely different game next time we play them.”

Coupeville actually kicked off the game with a brief surge, scoring two in the top of the first.

It was all downhill from there.

Josh Bayne led off the game with a walk, then came around to score when a Klahowya outfielder misplayed a ball that Aaron Curtin crushed into right.

Carson Risner picked up his team’s second RBI, swatting a ball to the right side to score Curtin and put Klahowya temporarily on its heels.

“However, that was to be the end of our feel good moments,” Smith said with a sigh.

Curtin, who has been on a tear the entire season, whiffed two of the first three hitters he faced, but was undone by his defense, which booted a ball to let a run in.

“That error seemed to rattle us and we became a comedy of errors that didn’t seem all that funny,” Smith said with a deeper sigh.

Having tied the game at two, Klahowya jumped on multiple Coupeville errors in the third to blow things open.

Two walks, a misplayed fly ball in foul territory that gave an Eagles hitter a second chance — he promptly whacked a two-run double — another walk, and then a string of more errors piled on top of each other.

About the only bright moment in the inning came when Cole Payne made a diving backhand of a hard hit grounder and nabbed a runner coming into third.

With their defense imploding and Curtin pulled off the mound (Aaron Trumbull came on in relief), the Wolves needed a spark at the plate to even things out.

It never came.

“Things went from good to bad and we just looked pretty clueless and their pitcher got some momentum and rhythm and the only other hit we managed was an infield single by Josh,” Smith said.

Klahowya tacked on four more runs in the fifth inning in what was probably the nadir of the afternoon.

“They put the game out of reach by scoring four on three hits and five, yep five errors,” Smith said with the deepest sigh of them all. “I suppose I should be impressed that they only got four, but I’m not.”

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Chasin’ another banner!!

Posted in Girls Tennis, tagged 1A Olympic League, Brazil, CHS Wolves, Jacki Ginnings, tennis, Wynter Thorne on April 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Wynter Thorne made her singles debut Friday, cruising to a victory. (John Fisken photos)

The Luvera sisters, winnin’ and grinnin’.

The league is theirs to take.

Soundly thrashing the combined forces of Chimacum and Port Townsend Friday, the Coupeville High School girls’ tennis squad sent a message.

A loud one.

The chase for a championship banner in the 1A Olympic League goes through Cow Town, and the Wolves are dead-set on bringing home the hardware.

Friday’s 6-1 shellacking, coming on the heels of an equally-impressive dismantling of Klahowya in late March, lifts Coupeville to 2-0 in league play, 3-3 overall.

The Wolves still have two more matches apiece against their league rivals, but the opening wins were emphatic enough to make Vegas pick CHS as a sure thing.

Complete results:

Varsity:

1st Singles — Jacki Ginnings beat Laura De Michelli 6-2, 6-3

Not even a Brazilian foreign exchange student could ruffle the super-smooth Ginnings.

“Her game is developing rapidly as she plays matches,” said Coupeville coach Ken Stange. “Now that she’s into her third year of playing, Jacki’s now able to focus on the little subtleties of the game. She’s a real technician on the court!”

2nd Singles — Valen Trujillo beat Casi Rowland 6-0, 6-2

“Valen continues to roll. She simply overpowered her opponent. Sometimes it can be difficult to play well against a player who hits with little pace and direction.

“Valen didn’t let her own level of play dropped; she applied constant pressure.”

3rd Singles — Wynter Thorne beat Amelia Breithaupt 6-2, 6-2

Formerly a doubles ace, Thorne made her debut as a singles player and was an immediate hit.

“Her style of play is well-suited for the singles court. She has a long swing that produced deep shots. Wynter did not disappoint.

“Wynter looked quite comfortable. She moved well, she kept the ball deep, and she made her opponent run everywhere. She was all smiles. Her play made me feel like a genius. Her play also made me very happy.”

1st Doubles — Payton Aparicio/Sage Renninger lost to Ray Maki/Sarah Allen 6-3, 6-4

Coupeville’s freshmen ran into a duo that has been playing together for four years, and experience edged youthful enthusiasm.

“Payton and Sage made a very skilled team earn the win. The Wolf frosh continue to grow, and they are staying positive. Their time will come!”

2nd Doubles — McKenzie Bailey/Jazmine Franklin beat Sophia Thurstan/Makenzie Richey 6-3, 6-1

“McKenzie and Jazmine were on top of their games today! They are a pair that does not present a weak link.”

3rd Doubles — Sydney Autio/Micky LeVine beat Holly Taylor/Alyssa Wolfe 6-3, 6-4

The duo started hot, hit a rough spot, then regrouped and finished strong, winning Player of the Match honors.

4th Doubles — Ana Luvera/Ivy Luvera beat Amy Plastow/Tessa Rasmussen 6-1, 6-3

“They didn’t even think that they played well, but I assured them that they did. They played against players who played, well, non-traditionally.

“Ana and Ivy were able to overcome some odd bounces, and they sent their opponents packing.”

JV:

Bree Daigneault/McKenzie Meyer beat Chloe Patterson/Jordyn Johnson 8-1