Daniel Olson brought the heat on the mound and at the plate Tuesday in a 13-3 Senior Night win. (Morgan White photos)
First they got lucky. Then they got good.
Playing at home for the first time in 18 days, the Coupeville High School baseball squad took advantage of some early miscues Tuesday by visiting Mount Vernon Christian to keep their game close.
Then, once the bats were properly warmed up, the Wolves dropped the hammer, eventually strolling away with a 13-3 win on Senior Night.
With the victory, CHS improves to 6-2 during this pandemic-shortened season, while keeping alive its hopes of winning a Northwest 2B/1B League title.
Coupeville trails Friday Harbor (8-0) — the only team it’s lost to this season — by two games with three to play.
The league’s top two squads tangle Friday afternoon at Friday Harbor, playing a doubleheader with everything on the line.
If the Wolverines sweep or get a split, they clinch the title.
But, if Coupeville earns the sweep, both teams would sit at 8-2, having split their four games, with just one contest left on the schedule.
CHS closes at La Conner (0-7) Saturday, while Friday Harbor hosts Orcas Island (2-5) that day.
However the weekend plays out, the Wolves sent their home fans back to the parking lot with a light skip in their steps.
The win over MVC offered a nice tribute to Daniel Olson, the team’s lone senior, while also providing a superb preview of the damage which could be done by the rest of a very-young roster.
Coupeville coach Will Thayer got something from pretty much everyone, with 10 of 11 hitters reaching base, and freshmen accounting for six of the team’s nine RBI.
The game actually started with a brief burp, as MVC scraped out two runs in the top of the first, thanks to an infield single, two walks, and a brutal collision at home plate.
With the bases loaded and no one out, the Hurricane cleanup hitter bounced a ball up the middle, sending the runner at third barreling home.
As Wolf catcher Xavier Murdy went to pull in the incoming throw, bodies collided awkwardly and the ball squirted free, allowing a second MVC runner to sneak home in the confusion.
The violent entanglement sent a brief chill through any CHS basketball fans in the stands, but X-Man walked off any lingering aftereffects, restoring hope once again on the prairie.
From that point on, the rest of the game went pretty much the way Wolf faithful would have scripted things.
It began with the lanky Olson making a pretty spectacular pickoff move.
Whirling and firing a laser into shortstop Scott Hilborn’s glove, he removed a Hurricane runner who made the mistake of leaning slightly in the wrong direction.
Proving it wasn’t a fluke, the Wolf pitcher later pulled off the same successful pickoff play several innings later, after which time all MVC runners stayed bolted to the base.
Olson and his parents celebrate Senior Night.
The first time through the lineup, Coupeville was scraping a bit, yet generated just enough offense to keep things close.
The Wolves netted a run in the bottom of the first thanks to a couple of MVC mistakes.
Looking a little tentative, the Hurricanes booted a grounder by Sage Sharp, then lost control of a third strike two batters later, letting him scamper home.
Coupeville continued to get lucky, knotting things up 2-2 in the second thanks to the MVC pitcher airmailing a throw over first base on a two-out Sharp bunt.
The Hurricane hurler had time to make the play, but perhaps ruffled by the sound of Murdy blasting by, heading from third to home, his arm refused to work in sync with his brain on the play.
The visitors entertained brief hopes of going on a rampage themselves, edging back ahead 3-2 in the top of the third, before juicing the bags with three straight singles.
The base-knocks went to right, left, and center, at which point Olson tugged on his cap, righted himself, and effectively slammed the door on any upset bids.
Pumping strikes past the flailing Hurricanes, he struck out the next two sluggers to stem the tide, then rolled through the fourth and fifth innings in his final home pitching performance.
Coupeville got back to 3-3 on an RBI single by freshman Peyton Caveness, scoring Olson, who golfed his own hit into left to lead off the bottom of the third.
The game finally broke solidly for CHS in the fourth, however.
It started with Hawthorne Wolfe putting on a one-man show which would be hard to duplicate.
The speed demon leadoff hitter blasted a ball back, back, back, almost to the wall in right field, and was thinking of a triple, while possibly daydreaming of an inside-the-park home run.
Instead, Wolfe came flying around first doing 767.269148 miles per hour (the speed of sound, if you’re curious), then … stepped on something.
He either caught the edge of the first-base bag, or put one of his own feet on top of the other one while going full-tilt, and promptly face-planted, displacing dirt from Oak Harbor to Clinton.
And yet, Wolfe still had the presence of mind to get back up, moving sort of like Rocky Balboa after being hit in the face on 23 consecutive punches, and stagger down to second base before the ball arrived back in the infield.
The should-have-been-a-triple, could-have-been-a-homer, turned-out-to-be-the-year’s-most-entertaining-double got the joint rockin’, and the CHS bats boomin’.
Wolfe finally made it home when MVC booted a fly ball off the bat of Jonathan Valenzuela, then Cody Roberts used a super-sharp eye to earn a bases-loaded walk.
But it was the fab frosh with the big hit.
Caveness sent a low, screaming liner to left to bring two runners home, part of a four-RBI day for Coral’s younger brother.
Xavier Murdy, here to drop thunder and lightning with every swing.
Murdy tantalized the non-paying customers, coming up just inches short of becoming the first Wolf since Josh Bayne to bash a ball over the fence in deepest, darkest left field.
The CHS junior settled for a dramatically-long RBI sac fly, which made it 8-3, then quietly went and strapped his catcher’s gear back on, a pro acting like a pro.
Olson topped off his Senior Night festivities with that second pickoff we discussed earlier, then handed the ball to Valenzuela, who promptly struck out the side in the sixth.
Jonathan Valenzuela, King of K’s.
An RBI single from Olson in the fifth stretched the margin to 9-3, before Coupeville ended things (slightly) early with four more runs in the sixth.
Caveness returned with another RBI base-knock, before the game ended on a truly-gorgeous hit from another fab frosh.
Zane Oldenstadt, pinch-hitting for Coen Killian, proved to be deadly from the left side of the plate, lashing a two-run single which soared over third base, curled in the air, then bit grass on the good side of the left-field line.
It was a bold punctuation mark, especially for a team which has found considerable success, even with six freshmen — Caveness and Cole White started Tuesday — and three sophomores on a 15-man roster.
Add in a strong group of middle school players ready to make the jump to high school ball next spring, and both the present and future of Wolf baseball looks bright.
“We could be dangerous the next few years,” Thayer said with a big smile.
