Clay Reilly swung a hot stick and hauled rear down the line Tuesday, reaching base three times. (Shelli Trumbull photos)
Willie Smith, imparting wisdom, even on days when his players are driving him crazy.
Willie Smith is getting real tired of riding the roller coaster every day.
“These guys are going to have to decide at some point what kind of team they want to be. They can be very, very good, or very, very bad. It’s up to them, but they’re going to have to decide.”
Suffice it to say that’s the slightly cleaned-up version of what the Coupeville High School baseball guru had to say after agonizing through a cold afternoon on the prairie Tuesday, filled with extreme highs and unbelievable lows that ended with a gut-punch of a 7-6 loss in 10 innings.
The non-conference defeat, coming to a Lynden Christian squad that was assuredly NOT the better team, dropped the Wolves to 2-4.
Over the course of three-and-a-half hours that saw cold, wind, a hint or two of sun, more cold, a hint or two of rain, and a lot more cold, two teams did battle.
But it wasn’t really the Lyncs and the Wolves fighting.
It was more like Coupeville split into two different sides of its psyche and waged a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde show.
It was a performance that threatened to make Smith go prematurely grey, start drinking in the dugout or allow the less-than-stellar umpiring crew to toss him for arguing over two badly blown calls.
Except being ejected would have cost him the chance to coach Thursday at Cedarcrest, and Smith, regaining his boyish sense of humor in the midst of a stormy post-game press conference, readily admitted he was looking forward to skipping out on parent/teacher conferences that day.
Side note: there were more than two bad calls, but a couple were especially grievous. More on that later.
When the Wolves were on Tuesday, they looked stellar.
Aaron Curtin had a game for the ages, smashing four hits, including an RBI double.
He also made a dandy unassisted double play in which he nabbed runners headed to home and third in one wild whirl across the left side of the diamond.
Oh yeah, and he also came on in relief and pitched what should have been six scoreless innings.
Except the cold umps, ankling for an exit, made two lousy calls that resulted in the deciding run coming in on a bases-loaded walk in the 10th.
Toss in the hustle of Clay Reilly, who came up roaring out of the #8 slot in the lineup and reached base three times on the day, as a true positive.
Seven of the nine Wolf starters rapped a hit, and Coupeville built a 3-0 lead on the strength of a two-run single from Carson Risner and a double steal where Curtin scampered home.
But then things darkened, big time, and not just in the sky.
The lead vanished in the fourth as quickly as CHS forgot how to throw to third base.
Cole Payne, who was manning the hot corner in the early going, spent much of the inning sprawling in the dirt trying to snag some God-awful throws from his teammates, while Lynden Christian runners sailed past him.
It didn’t get better from there, as a string of mental errors and questionable decisions doomed the Wolves both in the field and at the plate.
The umps did their best to pick at the scab, calling a runner safe on a play where Risner stepped on home for a presumed force-out, then lost control of the ball only AFTER clearing the plate and starting to make a throw.
With their seeing-eye dog yowling from his perch out in the ump’s car way off in the parking lot, both men in black went against all conventional baseball wisdom (and the rule book), allowing the Lync rally to unfairly continue.
But then, with things looking awful at 6-3, the sun popped back out (for a moment) and Coupeville found its groove again.
Two runs in the fifth, on a bases loaded walk to Hunter Smith and a balk by the Lynden pitcher that sent another runner home, closed the gap to 6-5.
Curtin knotted the game up in the sixth — letting the scoreboard read 6-6-6 — with a ferocious double, but died an agonizing death as the next two Wolf hitters left him hanging in the breeze.
That became the theme in the latter stages, as Coupeville stranded six runners from the seventh through the tenth.
The most soul-shredding was in the bottom of the eighth, when the Wolves juiced the bags with just one out, before meekly surrendering on a called third strike and a soft ground-out back to the pitcher.
Down to their final chance as the sun began to rapidly slide out of sight, CHS shot itself in the foot (again), having two players called out on the same play to kill its hopes.
Smith, bearing the look of a man who had his soul battered for 200+ minutes, was frustrated, angry and peeved. And that’s putting it mildly.
But, like any coach worth his salt, after venting at the team way far away from family, friends and fans (some words traveled with the wind…), he spent most of his post-game time pulling individual players away for a quick moment of one-on-one.
A few quiet words, handshakes, encouragement where it was needed, a fatherly kick in the rear for some, Smith worked each of his players like a psychiatrist.
And you could see in their responses, in the way that say, sophomore Gabe Wynn stared intently at Smith, responding with a firm “Yes, coach” again and again, that his players value the interaction.
Frustration in the moment, but building, reinforcing, molding — the mark of a quality coach who knows his team is capable of big things.
If they decide that’s the way they want to go.
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