Coupeville frosh Izzy Wells brings the heat Thursday at the district softball tourney in Sedro-Woolley. (Karen Carlson photos)
Scout Smith comes chugging home with one of three fences-clearing home-runs the Wolves smashed as they swept two games and clinched a trip to state.
Third time’s the charm.
After falling a single win shy of advancing to the state tournament two years running, the Coupeville High School softball team flipped the script this time around.
Mashing the ball with a cold, relentless fury Thursday, launching three home runs amid a hail of extra-base hits, the Wolf sluggers swept two games at the district tourney in Sedro-Woolley, clinching their ticket to the big dance.
It’s the third trip to state for Coupeville softball, as the 2019 Wolves join the 2002 and 2014 teams in earning a bid.
After bouncing Meridian 15-0, then holding off a late rally by conference arch-rival Granite Falls in an 11-10 thriller, Coupeville first advances to Saturday’s district championship game.
The Wolves, now 14-7 and carrying a six-game winning streak, play Lynden Christian (11-11) at 2 PM back at Janicki Fields.
That’s a rematch of an early-season non-conference game in which the Lyncs slipped away with a 9-6 win on their home field.
Lynden Christian, the #3 seed from the Northwest Conference, was a bit of a surprise Thursday, drilling Cedar Park Christian 15-3 before toppling NWC #1 Mount Baker 19-17 in the semifinals.
Win or lose Saturday, both Coupeville and Lynden Christian are state-bound May 24-25, heading to Richland to be part of the 16-team 1A field.
The draw for the state tourney is announced this Sunday.
Districts started with nine teams vying for three spots to state, and South Whidbey and Meridian went 0-2 Thursday and crashed out, joining Sultan, which lost a play-in game.
The four teams which finished 1-1 will vie Saturday for the third, and final, state berth from District 1.
Granite Falls faces Cedar Park, and Mount Baker plays Nooksack Valley in loser-out games at noon.
The survivors clash at 2 PM for third-place, while Coupeville and Lynden Christian play for the big trophy on field one, the diamond which the Wolves ruled Thursday afternoon and evening.
How things played out:
Game 1:
The first time Coupeville played Meridian, it was a balmy Saturday afternoon on Whidbey Island, and the Wolves romped to an 11-1 mid-season non-league win.
Come playoff time, CHS kicked it into another gear, scoring 11 runs in one inning — with 10 of those coming with two outs — as all nine starters reached base in a game called in the fourth thanks to the mercy rule.
For a game which finished 15-0, it was surprisingly close for a solid 15 minutes.
Neither team scored until the bottom of the second, and Coupeville actually went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the first.
To give credit where it’s due, Wolf hitters Scout Smith, Emma Mathusek, and Chelsea Prescott all ripped wicked line drives first time around, only to have Meridian show off some quality glove work.
The first hot shot was snagged in mid-flight by the Trojan shortstop, the next two by a very-startled first baseman.
But with Smith flinging liquid heat from the pitcher’s circle, Meridian could do diddly squat on offense, and Coupeville wouldn’t be held down for long.
The Wolves picked up one run after Sarah Wright bashed a ball off the shortstop’s glove, before moving to third on a ground-out, then strolling home when Veronica Crownover tattooed the ball off the top of the left field wall for an RBI double.
Field #1 had higher fences than the other three diamonds at the play-fields, and the two-bagger would have been a home run on every other field.
Crownover, camped at second, briefly eyeballed the fence, then stashed that info away for later use.
Spoiler alert: the Wolf first-baseman, who leads her squad in taters, hits two home runs later in this story, proving her ability to adjust in-game.
And back to our story as it develops, with walks to Mackenzie Davis and Nicole Laxton setting the table for Smith, who promptly cranked a two-run double to left to give herself, and her pitching arm, a little cushion.
While Smith’s bat made the Meridian coach weep internally, the end of the play, when Laxton pulled off a Pete Rose-worthy head-first slide into third to beat the incoming throw, might have been the prettiest play of the whole dang afternoon.
Back in the pitcher’s circle, Smith gunned down the Trojans 1-2-3 for the second straight inning, part of a run where she retired eight of nine hitters, then erased her one minor mistake (a walk) by inducing a double-play.
Coupeville could have slid by with a run here, a run there, which is what it looked like might happen after Mollie Bailey plated Wright with a sac fly in the bottom of the third.
Up 4-0, with two outs and not a soul aboard, the Wolves were in a decent place.
Then they moved to a really great place.
After Bailey — whose older sister McKayla was the pitching ace for the last Wolf softball team to go to state — bopped back to the bench, a drummer always moving to her own beat, CHS ignited a rally for the ages.
The next 10 Wolf batters reached base safely, starting with a Crownover single, then ending when she came back around to paste the snot out of the ball for a two-run home-run to right-center.
Her fourth ball to clear the fence and fly away to open spaces this season (spoiler: #5 is coming before this story is done), Crownover’s blast followed on the heels of RBI singles from Coral Caveness and Bailey, several Meridian errors, and Prescott gettin’ medieval.
The sophomore shortstop cranked a three-run double that would have been a triple, if she hadn’t hit a hidden hole in the infield as she barreled towards second base.
Prescott, running with a full head of steam, suddenly went down like a sniper in the stands shot out her leg, sending a momentary tremor through Wolf Nation.
But, after five seconds, which felt like an hour, she popped up, bounced around, then perched atop the bag, smiling, and all the pent-up air rushed back out of Coupeville fans in a happy sigh.
Up 14-0 by the time the third inning finally ended, the Wolves needed just a single run in the bottom of the fourth to take advantage of a postseason mercy rule which ends games when one team goes up by 15 any time after the third inning.
Fittingly, it was Smith, who parked a liner to left, sending Laxton home with the final run and earning herself the (sort of) complete-game shutout.
Coupeville rapped out nine hits in the opener, and would get another 12 base-knocks in the night-cap.
Crownover, with two home runs among her four hits, led the way, while Smith, Prescott, Wright, and Caveness piled up three base-knocks apiece across the two games.
Mathusek (2), Bailey (2), and Laxton (1) rounded out the hit parade.
Game 2:
While Coupeville had plenty of time to sit around, have a bite to eat, and relax, Granite played all seven innings in its opener, stranding the tying and winning runs on base in a 7-6 thriller against Nooksack Valley.
The Tigers, who beat the Wolves twice this season, only to see CHS bounce back for a win in their third meeting, which was crucial to Coupeville clinching the #1 seed from the North Sound Conference, looked tired when they trekked over to Field #1.
This time it was Wells, the fab frosh, in the pitcher’s circle and she came out poppin’ in a 1-2-3 top of the first.
Granite, with its main hurler having thrown a ton of pitches in the opening game, answered with a backup chucker, causing the Wolves to lick their chops.
Dropping hay-makers from the get-go, Coupeville got a lead-off homer to left from Smith, her second big blast of the season, then an RBI single from Bailey.
Enter Crownover, twirling her bat and giving the stink eye to the Tiger hurler, and exit the ball, with a three-run blast grabbing a one-way ticket over the fence in left-center, staking CHS to a 5-0 lead.
Turns out the Wolves would need every one of those runs, as Granite picked away for two runs in the second, then one more in both the third and fourth.
While the lead shrank to 5-4, things didn’t get truly tragic.
Smart defensive plays, whether it was Mathusek with a diving catch in center, Bailey nonchalantly yanking a red-hot liner out of the air a millisecond before it screamed past her head, or a Laxton-to-Prescott-to-Wright relay to nail a runner at the plate, were huge.
Granite, known for its ability to generate huge offensive outbursts, kept on being muted by Wells and her teammates, and Coupeville never lost the lead.
Ever.
Looking for some breathing room, the Wolves erupted for another five runs in the bottom of the fourth, stretching the margin back out to a more comfortable 10-4.
It started with Caveness, who has been on a hitting tear during the second-half of the season, poking a single into a microscopic gap in left, then really got rolling with base-knocks from Mathusek, Prescott, and Wright.
Prescott’s single was a supremely weird chopper which spun the wrong way, evading the Granite pitcher like they were playing tag at recess.
Wright’s was a wicked pool shot hammered by a back alley hustler taking all your money while making you think you somehow still had a chance to get the cash back.
You don’t, so don’t ask.
From there, the two teams each nabbed a single run, with Prescott delivering an RBI triple while, this time, avoiding the hidden hole at second.
Coupeville couldn’t quite pull away to ten-run Granite, but the Tigers couldn’t get to Wells, or Smith, who came on in relief in the fifth, and it was 11-5 with the Wolves three outs from nirvana.
And then things got sticky.
Maybe nerves finally got to the Wolves a bit, maybe it was the lil’ rain drops which sputtered off and on over the day, maybe it was just a way to make sure the audience didn’t desert Field #1 for any of the other games.
Two crucial Granite hits, and a couple of Coupeville brain fart errors, gave the Tigers a last bit of hope.
In the flicker of an eye, it went from 11-5 to 11-10, and the Wolves were scraping, desperately, to get those final, precious outs.
Caveness, who was superb in the field all day, picked up an out with a sweet snag and flip to Prescott, while Smith erased another hitter on a come-backer.
But Granite had its second-best hitter at the plate, representing the tying run, and its best hitter on-deck, and, for a flicker of a moment, it might have been easy for bad memories to return.
Three years ago, when current seniors Crownover, Laxton, and Wright were freshmen, the Wolves went one and out at districts.
Two years ago, after four playoff games in 22 hours, an exhausted Coupeville team stood a single strike away from eliminating Bellevue Christian and advancing to state … but couldn’t get there.
Last year, the Wolves needed to beat Klahowya, a team they had won six straight against, to punch their ticket.
But it didn’t happen.
Thursday night, at a few minutes past 8 PM Pacific Standard Time, all those memories went away, however.
Smith fired a final pitch and got the ground-out she needed, wanted, and deserved.
Prescott went low, snapped up the ball effortlessly, popped up, took a moment to plant herself, then the orb was headed towards Crownover’s glove, flicked with precision and great velocity.
Time froze, a last raindrop splashed down on the bill of a fan’s ball cap, then Crownover squeezed the ball gently and the universe righted itself.
Sometimes you get the reward for all the hard work, the bruises and scrapes, the late nights on ferries and buses, for never giving up, no matter how many twists and turns come your way in your athletic life.
For Coupeville softball, its steady seniors, its ball-joltin’ juniors, its superb sophomores, its bright-eyed freshmen, and its coaching staff full of diamond lifers, Thursday was one of the biggies.
There’s still much ahead — the district title game, a run at state, and then, down the road, the awards banquet.
But Thursday?
That’s the one they talk about at their 10-year reunion, the one they tell their own daughters about when they hand them a glove for the first time in the backyards of the future.
Thursday will live forever.
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