Freshman Coral Caveness knocked in three runs Tuesday, propelling Coupeville’s JV softball sluggers past 2A Sequim. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)
“I couldn’t be more proud of them!”
After watching his JV players come up with inspired play after inspired play Tuesday, Coupeville High School softball coach Kevin McGranahan was a happy man.
Thrilled that the Wolves rallied to topple visiting 2A Sequim 8-6, but also pleased with the fact that, one through nine, the CHS players all brought their A-game in front of their home fans.
“It was a team win,” McGranahan said. “Took everybody to get it.”
The win lifts the young Wolves to a pristine 2-0 on the season, with their wins coming against Concrete’s varsity and a Sequim JV squad which had big bats and a tough pitcher.
The visiting hurler, staked to an early 2-0 lead after her team scratched out a single run in both the first and second inning, was sharp for five hitters.
Then, with two outs and no one on in the bottom of the second, she made a small mistake which quickly turned into a semi-fatal one.
A pitch got away and smacked solidly into Marenna Rebischke-Smith, landing with the kind of sound one usually associates with a melon, having been dropped off the Empire State building, connecting with the pavement below.
It wasn’t a nick or a ding, but a full-on shot to the chops, and the Wolf bench gasped, then exploded in cheers for Rebischke-Smith taking a nasty shot and not going down.
Her sacrifice seemed to ignite something in the Wolves, as they promptly proceeded to tear the game open, sending eight more hitters to the plate in what turned into an 11-batter, six-run rally.
After Rebischke-Smith scampered to second on a passed ball, she skipped home when Melia Welling tore the hide off the ball on an RBI single to right.
Jenna Dickson also got herself plunked (though not quite as loudly), then Mollie Bailey eked out a walk to juice the bags, setting up freshman Coral Caveness for the first reel of her highlight film.
Lashing a two-run single to straight-away center, she pushed the Wolves ahead 3-2, and the floodgates really opened.
Thora Iverson and Chloe Wheeler plated runners with back-to-back wicked shots off of the gloves of Sequim defenders, Chelsea Prescott walked and another run came around on a wild pitch.
While Sequim finally escaped the inning on a nice defensive snag on a hard-hit grounder off the bat of Nicole Laxton, the damage was done, on the scoreboard and on the psyche of the visitors.
They proved to be a tough band of sluggers, though, scraping together two runs in the fifth and another two in the sixth to knot things back up at 6-6.
Coupeville had runners on in the third (a Rebischke-Smith walk) and fourth (a Wheeler single), but couldn’t re-light their runs-scoring magic.
Until the game was tied, that is, then the Wolves immediately, emphatically answered with a vengeance.
Bailey, who joined the game in the second inning after returning from a musical engagement, led off the bottom of the sixth with a frozen rope of a single.
Perhaps humming a tune to herself, she bolted around to score when Caveness belted the ball off the top of the center-fielder’s glove for a game-busting double.
Sequim almost escaped without any further damage, but Prescott kept things alive by earning a free bag for being nailed in the foot by a pitch.
That set up Laxton, who after ruffling the hair of several of her pint-sized family members (“I love you, too” she told her devoted fan club), went out and was a little less friendly towards the Sequim pitcher.
She smoked a shot over the bag at third, sending Caveness hurtling home with what would prove to be the game’s final run.
While offense earned the big cheers, Coupeville was solid on every front Tuesday afternoon.
Prescott whiffed seven Sequim hitters, while also making a couple of sweet defensive plays on balls hit back near the mound.
Not to be outdone, Welling made a lightning-quick snag on a fast grounder that exploded at her feet over at third, while Iverson had the best play of the game, and it wasn’t even close.
Coupeville’s second-baseman showed off her glove skills and her quick thinking as the Wolves were trying to escape the fifth inning.
A Sequim batter crunched a ball back up the middle, which Prescott partially deflected.
Spinning off her glove, the orb next came in contact with Caveness, who also got a small portion of her glove on the ball, which caused it to skid in the other direction.
With a runner coming in hot, Iverson went to the ground, knocked the careening ball down, landed on it, then had the presence of mind to do The Worm and launch herself to the bag, beating the runner by half a step.
The web gem of a play brought a loud yelp of approval from McGranahan, a roar from the crowd and a small smile from the low-key Iverson.
