Camden Glover struck out eight in four innings Tuesday, earning a win in Darrington. (Jackie Saia photo)
Pick your moments.
For the Coupeville High School baseball squad, the window of opportunity opened in the top of the sixth inning Tuesday afternoon.
To the Wolves credit, they seized it.
Trailing 2-1 at Darrington, with two outs and nobody aboard, struggling to scrape out hits, Steve Hilborn’s diamond men pulled off a stunning reversal, getting eight consecutive hitters on base from that point and pulling away for what would become a 6-2 win.
The victory, coming less than 24 hours after a non-conference loss to East Jefferson, gets the Wolves to 3-0 in Northwest 2B/1B League play, 4-2 overall, with a rematch against Darrington set for Thursday on Whidbey Island.
It also pushes CHS back into a first-place tie with Mount Vernon Christian atop the conference at the quarter mark of the 12-game league schedule.
Things were looking a bit dire in the sixth for the Wolves, despite Coop Cooper leading off the frame with a double.
A groundout, followed by a successful pick-off play from Darrington, and Coupeville seemingly had nothing to work with.
CHS hadn’t scored since the first, and had stranded three runners an inning before, allowing the Loggers to hold on to their lead by the narrowest margin.
Then Darrington’s pitchers forgot how to throw a strike. Literally.
Consecutive walks to Trent Thule, Malachi Somes, and Chris Zenz loaded the bases, before a free pass to Carson Grove pushed a runner home to knot things at 2-2.
That brought leadoff hitter Chase Anderson to the plate, and he delivered, crushing a bases-clearing double to center — one of just four Wolf hits on the afternoon — and the entire game had flipped.
Not that Darrington was done walking folks.
Aiden O’Neill got a free trip to first, before the Loggers went to a new pitcher, who promptly plunked Camden Glover and Cooper wham-bam to give Coupeville its final run.
Glover, who tossed four innings after coming on in relief of Anderson, made that stand up, retiring six of the final seven hitters he faced, with five going down on strikeouts.
For the game, the Wolf pitchers combined to whiff 13, with Glover tops with eight, while limiting Darrington to just two hits across seven innings.
While Coupeville didn’t get many more base knocks of their own, three of their four hits were of the extra-base variety, while CHS also racked up 12 walks.
The visitors opened the scoring in the top of the first, with O’Neill walking (what else?), stealing second and third, then scampering home to score on a Darrington error.
While the Wolves went down 1-2-3 in both the second and third, strong defense, including nailing a runner trying to steal third, kept the game at 1-0 until the Loggers scraped out a run in the third, and another in the fourth.
The first Darrington run came in on a passed ball, the second on an RBI single, but after that Anderson and Glover were largely lights out the rest of the way.
Coupeville loaded the bases in the fifth, packaging walks to Riley Lawless and O’Neill around an Anderson single, but the Loggers escaped by snagging a two-out pop up in foul territory.
That set the stage for the sixth, and this time the Wolves were able to take advantage, keeping an early-season run of success going.
Tuesday stats:
Chase Anderson — One single, one double
Coop Cooper — One double, one walk
Camden Glover — Two walks
Carson Grove — One walk
Riley Lawless — One walk
Aiden O’Neill — Three walks
Leo Rodriguez — One double
Malachi Somes — One walk
Trent Thule — Two walks
Chris Zenz — One walk
