Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘baseball’

Booming bats, electric arms

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , , on April 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Carson Grove had four hits Tuesday, including a grand slam. (Presley Phillips photo)

What a difference a game makes.

Three days ago, the Coupeville High School baseball squad delivered its worst performance of the season. Jump forward to Tuesday and everything was back in order, however.

And far more than that, as three Wolf hurlers combined for a 13-strikeout no-hitter and the batters went bonkers in a 25-0 win on the road in Concrete.

The blowout five-inning victory snaps a brief two-game skid for CHS, lifting Steve Hilborn’s squad to 6-1 in Northwest 2B/1B League play, 8-4 overall.

It also keeps them a game back of Mount Vernon Christian (7-0) in the race for a conference crown, with a rematch against Concrete set for Thursday in Cow Town.

Saturday the Wolves struggled in all aspects of the game while dropping a non-conference bout at Forks. Against the Lions, everything was clicking again.

Camden Glover, Coop Cooper, and Malachi Somes combined to shut Concrete’s offense down, giving up just four walks and not surrendering a single base knock to their hosts.

Glover and Cooper each picked up six strikeouts in two innings of work, while Somes, making his mound debut for the Wolves, added a 13th K, then ended the game by inducing a double play.

Malachi Somes gets his first mound action. (Shannon Hilborn photo)

At the plate everything went Coupeville’s way, as the visitors tore the hide off the ball en route to collecting a season-high 20 hits to go with 10 walks.

Four runs in the first got things started, another four in the second stretched the lead out, then CHS tacked on nine more tallies in the third and another eight in the fourth.

The Wolves came roaring out of the gate, with Leo Rodriguez lashing a leadoff single and Carson Grove walking.

That set up Chase Anderson, who delivered the first mammoth blow of the afternoon, smashing a three-run inside the park home run to left to set the tone.

Tack on an Aiden O’Neill triple, followed by Cooper bringing him around to score with a hot grounder, and it was 4-0 before Concrete’s fans could even get settled into their seats.

From there the Wolves continued to rain down unholy pain on the Lions, with Grove and Glover delivering RBI-rich hits in the second before coming back around to do the same in the third.

That frame featured not one, but two CHS players picking up RBIs in unique fashion, as both Anderson and Somes were drilled by wayward pitches with the bases loaded.

Up 17-0 heading into the fourth, there didn’t seem to be much more the Wolves could do that they hadn’t already done.

Not so fast, as Grove belted an inside the park grand slam to really make the scoreboard pop.

Overall, nine different Wolves collected a hit on the day, with 11 reaching base.

And the scorekeeper’s fingers? Probably buried deep in a bucket of ice right about now.

 

Tuesday stats:

Chase Anderson — One single, one home run, one walk
Coop Cooper — Three singles
Camden Glover — One single, one double, one walk
Carson Grove — Three singles, one home run, one walk
Riley Lawless — One walk
Aiden O’Neill — One single, one triple
Leo Rodriguez — One single, one walk
Killian Shaw — One single, one walk
Malachi Somes — Two singles, one walk
Trent Thule — Three singles, one walk
Aiden Tingley — Two walks

Read Full Post »

Wolf grads shine on college diamonds

Posted in Softball, Wolves in college, tagged , , , , , , on April 20, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Landon Roberts is back in black.

Give them their moment, and they’ll deliver.

Coupeville grads Landon Roberts and Madison McMillan are part of deep diamond rosters at Walla Walla College and Edmonds College, respectively, so neither former Wolf is playing full-time as a freshman.

But they’re drawing notice when they get the call.

Roberts is part of a pitching staff which has used 14 hurlers this season, but he’s appeared in four games, which puts him in the thick of things for a squad where no mound man has more than nine games to their credit.

His best performance came recently against Wenatchee Valley, where he came on in relief and picked up his first collegiate strikeouts, whiffing two of the four hitters he faced.

Madison McMillan (left) is pounding the softball.

McMillan, meanwhile, is part of an Edmonds squad which is streaking at 27-2 after sweeping a doubleheader against Shoreline Sunday.

The power-hitting third baseman picked up four hits, three runs, and a walk as the Tritons came out on top 26-2 and 20-0 in games mercy-ruled after five innings.

On the season McMillan has racked up a .394 batting average across 19 games, with 12 runs, 13 hits, three doubles, three home runs, 18 RBI, and seven walks.

Unofficially, she should be sitting with five taters but has twice had umps wave off moonballs due to team base-running technicalities.

Read Full Post »

Survive, thrive, play on

Posted in Baseball, Girls Tennis, Softball, tagged , , , , , on April 19, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Wolf netters (left to right) Kauri Hamilton, Aleksia Jump, and Dahlia Miller are super-thrilled to play in the swirling winds of a prairie “spring.” (Melanie Wolfe photo)

The season rolls on.

The weather hasn’t been stunning, but most Coupeville High School athletic events on the schedule have been played this spring, as the Wolves survive and thrive.

Looking at the week ahead, it’s heavy on home affairs, with five of nine contests set to go down on the prairie.

Chief among those is the Cow Town Classic Invite, hosted by the CHS track and field team Saturday morning.

While the Wolf girls’ tennis team travels to Granite Falls Monday and University Prep Saturday, both of Coupeville’s diamond squads get to play two of three on their own fields.

The Smash Sisters and diamond men travel to Concrete Tuesday, before hosting back-to-back games Thursday and Friday.

The first of those are against the same Lions squads they play earlier in the week, with Friday’s twin-bill a non-conference rumble with Island rival South Whidbey.

As we head into the next-to-last week of April, a look at where things currently sit:

 

Northwest League baseball:

School League Overall
MV Christian 6-0 10-2
Coupeville 5-1 7-4
Friday Harbor 4-2 5-5
La Conner 2-3 3-7
Orcas Island 2-4 3-7
Concrete 0-3 0-3
Darrington 0-6 0-11

 

Northwest League girls’ tennis:

School League Overall
Coupeville 1-1 2-3
Friday Harbor 1-1 2-2

 

Northwest League softball:

School League Overall
Coupeville 6-0 11-1
Friday Harbor 4-2 7-6
Orcas Island 3-2 4-5
La Conner 2-2 4-3
Concrete 0-4 0-4
Darrington 0-5 1-6

Read Full Post »

Long trip, rough day

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , on April 18, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Trent Thule whiffed four while pitching in Forks Saturday afternoon. (Melanie Wolfe photo)

Some days very little seems to work.

That was sort of the feeling Saturday as the Coupeville High School baseball squad struggled in all aspects of the game far away from home, absorbing its most lopsided loss of the season.

Falling 12-2 to non-conference foe Forks in a game mercy-ruled after five innings, the Wolves drop to 7-4 but will quickly turn their attention back to more pressing matters.

Steve Hilborn’s squad returns to action with Northwest 2B/1B League clashes against Concrete next Tuesday and Thursday, as they chase a conference crown.

When it squares off with the Lions, Coupeville will look to put Saturday’s performance in the rear-view mirror and not dwell on a day when its defensive errors (7) outnumbered its hits (2) and walks (2) combined.

CHS actually got on the board first in Forks, with Carson Grove using nimble base-running to slap a run on the board in the top of the first.

After reaching on a fielder’s choice, the Wolf sophomore stole second, skittered to third on an error by the Forks catcher, then scooted home on a wild pitch.

The Spartans responded almost immediately, pushing two runs across in the bottom half of the frame, before Coupeville briefly knotted things up at 2-2 in the top of the second.

Senior speed demon Aiden O’Neill led off the inning by belting a triple to left field, before later bolting for home on yet another wild pitch.

Unfortunately for Coupeville, that was about it for offense as the Wolves only got two more runners aboard across the game’s final three-plus innings, with both runners being left stranded.

Forks blew the game wide open in the bottom half of the second, piling on seven runs thanks to a motley mix of walks and CHS errors, before tacking on three more in the fifth to bring an early end to things.

Young Wolf pitchers Trent Thule (4) and Carson Grove (2) combined to rack up six strikeouts in the game, partially balancing things.

 

Saturday stats:

Coop Cooper — One single
Carson Grove — One walk
Aiden O’Neill — One triple
Leo Rodriguez — One walk

Read Full Post »

Narrow loss snaps win streak

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , on April 16, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The race is on. (Julie Wheat photos)

Every play mattered.

Coupeville and La Conner clashed in two high school baseball games over a three-day period this week, with each home team pulling out a one-run victory.

Tuesday that meant smiles for the Wolves on a cold Central Whidbey prairie.

Thursday the mood was a bit more somber under blue skies on the mainland, as the Braves got a bit of revenge with a 3-2 win to earn a split in the season series.

The loss, which snaps a four-game winning streak for Coupeville, drops Steve Hilborn’s squad to 5-1 in Northwest 2B/1B League play, 7-3 overall.

The Wolves, who travel to Forks Saturday for a non-conference tilt, sit a game off of NWL top dog Mount Vernon Christian (6-0) at the halfway point of the season.

CHS doesn’t face MVC until the final week of the campaign but was hoping for a triumph Thursday to stay even with the idle Hurricanes.

But, while the Wolves came close, they left too many runners stranded in a low-scoring affair, while La Conner found the crunch-time hit it needed to come out on top.

That game-winning blow came off the bat of Angus Poprycz, who laced an RBI single to right field in the bottom of the sixth inning to bust up a 2-2 tie.

Coupeville put the potential tying run on base in the top of the seventh, thanks to senior Aiden O’Neill eking out his third walk of the afternoon.

Unfortunately, after stealing second base he never got any closer to home as the Braves defense clamped down.

Leo Rodriguez takes his cuts.

The Wolves had opened the scoring way back in the first, with Leo Rodriguez laying down a bunt single, before coming around to tap home thanks to a sac fly from Camden Glover.

La Conner answered with a run in the second and another in the third, benefitting from a couple of CHS errors, while the visitors went scoreless from the second through the fifth.

Coupeville had runners at second and third in the third, after a walk to O’Neill and a single from Chase Anderson, but a fly out ended the rally before it could get interesting.

In the fourth, the Wolves again had multiple guys aboard, with Carson Grove ripping a hit and Riley Lawless earning a free pass, but once again La Conner escaped at the last moment.

CHS finally knotted things back up in the sixth, with Glover reaching on an error, stealing second, and scoring on an RBI single from Grove.

But that was it for the Wolves in a game where runs were at a premium.

While Coupeville had several miscues in the field, it did pull off a nice double play, with Glover, Anderson, and Lawless teaming up for the twin-killing.

On the mound Glover scattered three hits across six innings of work, racking up eight strikeouts along the way.

 

Thursday stats:

Chase Anderson — Two singles
Carson Grove — Two singles
Riley Lawless — Two walks
Aiden O’Neill — Three walks
Leo Rodriguez — One single

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »