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Posts Tagged ‘home opener’

Diamond men launch new campaign

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , on March 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Coop Cooper is a veteran leader on a young Wolf hardball squad. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

There’s bound to be some bumps in the road.

After back-to-back trips to the 2B state playoffs, the Coupeville High School baseball squad finds itself in a rebuilding year.

The Wolves have just 11 players total, with four freshmen and two 8th graders, while only three guys in the lineup were letter winners a season ago.

So, Tuesday’s season opener, an 18-0 loss to visiting Meridian, a tough 1A foe with a history of excellence, is not completely unsurprising.

The trick for Steve Hilborn’s very raw Wolf team will be to let things go, learn from the loss, and bounce back quickly with a road trip to Port Townsend to play East Jefferson coming up Thursday afternoon.

The tilt with Meridian was supposed to be game #2 on the season, but a weekend road trip to Blaine was washed away by Mother Nature.

The weather on the prairie was fairly tranquil Tuesday, but the visiting Trojans were a rough and tumble bunch.

Meridian outhit Coupeville 10-1 and took advantage of eight Wolf errors to jump out to a big lead and never look back.

Up 6-0 after the top of the first inning, the Trojans methodically tacked on runs in each frame, forcing the mercy rule to be enacted after the bottom of the fifth.

Coupeville’s best offensive output came in the bottom of the first, but the hometown hardball heroes couldn’t keep a brief rally going.

Senior Landon Roberts lashed a leadoff single, but it would be the only base knock for the Wolves on this day.

Walks to Carson Grove (who was hit by a pitch) and Jayden Little filled the bags, but Meridian escaped without surrendering a run.

Coupeville’s offense sputtered through the next three innings, with the Wolves going 1-2-3 in each frame.

Down to their final at-bats, the Wolves put two runners aboard in the bottom of the fifth, with Phin Rhodes reaching on an error and Roberts eking out a walk, but that was where things ended for CHS.

One definite positive for Coupeville came via the strikeout, as four Wolf hurlers combined to record 13 K’s.

Roberts led the way with six, while Grove whiffed three and Camden Glover and Coop Cooper each recorded two.

Meridian’s other two outs came on fly balls to the outfield, as the Trojans didn’t record a single out on a groundball.

Riley Lawless, Trent Thule, Chris Zenz, Leo Rodriguez, and Jesus Madrigal rounded out the Wolf roster, joining Rhodes in making their CHS baseball debuts.

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CMS hardwood aces have successful home debut

Posted in Girls Basketball, Middle School, tagged , , , , on February 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Coupeville 8th graders are ready for prime time. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

The stage was all theirs.

With the high school basketball playoffs on hold Wednesday, the Coupeville Middle School girls’ hardwood aces took possession of the floor.

Facing off with visiting Granite Falls, the young Wolves captured a big win and came close to another victory in their home opener.

How things went down:

 

Level 1:

The one game the visitors dominated, as Coupeville hung tough in the first quarter before falling short in a 35-9 loss.

Granite was clinging to just an 8-6 lead at the first break, but busted things open with 8-1 and 14-0 surges across the next two frames.

Kaleigha Millison paced the Wolves with four points, while Finley Helm (2), Allison Powers (2), and Elizabeth Marshall (1) also scored.

Sophia Batterman, Emma Cushman, KeeAyra Brown, and Cameron Van Dyke also saw floor time for CMS in the contest.

 

Level 2:

A tense battle, with Granite pulling out the 26-22 victory with a late run.

Coupeville popped out to a 7-6 lead through one quarter of play and was still on top 13-12 by halftime.

The Wolves trailed just 18-17 heading into the final frame but couldn’t quite hold down the scrappy Tigers at crunch time.

Emma Green had the magic shooting touch, rolling up a team-high nine points for CMS, while Annaliese Powers and Hazel Goldman both chipped in with four.

Laurel Crowder (3) and Addison Jacobson (2) rounded out the offensive attack, with Claire Lachnit, Selah Rivera, Millison, and Sabrina Judnich also in the rotation.

 

Level 3:

After sitting out the road opener at South Whidbey, Coupeville’s #3 squad was ready to flex and did so to the tune of a 42-4 victory.

The Wolves shot out to a quick 10-2 lead, pushed the advantage to 26-4 by the half, then blanked the visitors in the second half.

Nine different Coupeville players scored, with Cassandra Powers and Reagan Green each popping the nets for eight points to spark the offensive outbreak.

Ava Alford (6), Crowder (6), Annabelle Cundiff (6), Emily Rains (2), Sophia Burley (2), Abbey Hunt (2), and Bella Sandlin (2) also etched their names in the scorebook.

Arianna Vinson, Lachnit, Ruby Folkestad, Millie Somes, and Sophia Magdolan saw floor time as well in the huge win.

 

Up next:

The Wolves have an immediate turn around, heading off to the wilds of Sultan Thursday for a rumble with the testy Turks.

After that, CMS is back home Feb. 25 for a clash with Northshore Christian Academy.

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Home opener a stalemate for booters

Posted in soccer, tagged , , , , on September 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Coupeville’s seniors claim control of the soccer pitch. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

There’s always something new.

Robert Wood is 48 games into his run as a soccer coach at Coupeville High School, but Saturday’s home opener against Crosspoint provided a different wrinkle.

Playing through a few rain drops spit from an overcast prairie sky, the Wolves rallied in the second half to forge a 1-1 tie with their private school rivals, the first ever stalemate under their pitch guru.

With the contest being a non-conference one, the teams passed on playing overtime or going to a shoot-out to decide things. Instead, a mixed result for both squads.

And while Wood felt his team played better than it had in an earlier road loss to Auburn Adventist Academy, he wasn’t terribly overjoyed with Saturday’s result.

“We beat ourselves,” he said. “Just the very definition of apathetic.

“We didn’t play well enough to keep control of the ball and were tentative a lot of the time. Stuff to work on.”

The Wolves, now 0-1-1 on the season, play at home twice next week, welcoming Northwest 2B/1B League foes Friday Harbor and Grace Academy to Coupeville for non-conference games Tuesday and Saturday, respectively.

That will give the Wolves a chance to work on tightening up their attack and finding the fire in their collective bellies.

It’s not hard to believe it’s there, as there was moments Saturday when things sparked to life.

Trailing 1-0 early in the second half, despite outshooting Crosspoint, Coupeville finally found the counter when Sage Arends knocked in his first varsity goal with 32 minutes left to play.

The Wolves had at least two chances to claim the lead in the late going but came up just short.

Senior Preston Epp sent a penalty kick just barely wide left, the ball coming tantalizingly close to finding the back of the net as Crosspoint’s goaltender watched his life flash before his eyes.

Then, with the game in stoppage time, 8th grader Tamsin Ward, already having an impact in her high school debut, bashed a high arcing shot under pressure.

While the ball needed to be several feet lower to hit paydirt, it was still an impressive wallop from a young gun who shows no fear on the pitch.

Coupeville is playing as a co-ed team for the second straight season, while rebuilding the roster for a girls’ team, with female booters like Ward, Ayden Wyman, Lillian Ketterling, and Taylor Marrs holding their own in male-centric games.

Crosspoint tallied the afternoon’s first score 19 minutes into play, when freshman Caleb Smart slipped a shot through a thicket of players in front of the net.

Other than that shot, on which he was largely blocked from seeing the incoming ball, Wolf goalie Hurlee Bronec was lights out.

At one point the senior netminder deflected a shot at close range, then soared high to punch another ball up and over the goal.

Coupeville’s defensive front made Bronec’s job a lot easier after that, largely keeping Crosspoint at bay across the game’s final 50 minutes or so.

With a strong core of seniors, which includes Cael Wilson, Mason Butler, Dane Hadsall, Epp, Wyman, Bronec, Angel Partida, and Matthew Ward, the Wolves are primed for a successful run.

While Saturday’s tie was a mixed bag, Wood remains focused on the positives.

“We’ll keep working, that’s for sure,” he said as he headed into the night.

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Late shooting woes plague Wolves

Posted in Girls Basketball, tagged , , , , , on December 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Madison McMillan led Coupeville in scoring Saturday night. (Kaitlyn Leavell photo)

The basket stopped accepting Coupeville’s offerings in the final minutes.

After waging a tense tussle with Toledo for three-plus quarters Saturday, the Wolf varsity girls’ basketball squad went cold late, allowing the Riverhawks to storm their way to a non-conference victory.

The visitors closed on a 17-2 run across the game’s final six minutes, turning a five-point advantage into a 40-20 win.

The loss drops a rebuilding Coupeville squad to 0-2 on the season.

Megan Richter’s squad will have six days to work on its shooting touch, not returning to action against a rival until a trip to Sultan next Saturday, Dec. 9.

Saturday’s rumble, coming against a largely unknown foe, was a close, and low-scoring affair for much of the afternoon.

Madison McMillan drilled a quick shot mere seconds into play to stake CHS to a 2-0 lead, but the Wolves hit a wall after that.

Coupeville’s next bucket didn’t come until right before the end of the first quarter, courtesy a jumper from the side by Lyla Stuurmans, cutting the lead to 8-4.

The second quarter was an equal opportunity freeze-out, as the teams combined to hit six free throws … and not a single field goal.

Skylar Parker and Katie Marti connected on shots from the charity stripe, but CHS was down 11-7 at the half.

Things picked up in the third frame, though mainly for Toledo.

McMillan banked in a pair of buckets — one on a slash to the basket, the other off of an offensive rebound — but the visitors swished the game’s only three-ball as they pushed the advantage out to 21-14 heading into the fourth.

The Wolves, who played inspired defense for stretches of the game, cut the margin down to 23-18 after back-to-back buckets from Mia Farris and McMillan.

Farris made off with a steal, hitting the jets and sliding past a pursuing defender on a charge to the hoop, while McMillan knocked down a note-perfect pullup jumper.

But that was where it ended for Coupeville, at the moment where McMillan’s field goal dropped through the net and hit the hardwood.

Ramping up its attack, Toledo suddenly broke through and in a big way, raining down a series of buckets to pull away.

Farris sweetly swished a pair of free throws late, but Coupeville couldn’t get a shot from the field to drop in the game’s final minutes, mirroring its earlier struggles.

McMillan paced the Wolves with a season-high eight points, while Marti added five in support of her fellow junior.

Farris (4), Stuurmans (2), and Parker (1) also scored, while Jada Heaton, Teagan Calkins, Kayla Arnold, and Reese Wilkinson also saw floor time.

It was the varsity debut for the latter two of that group.

And in an intriguing side note, Farris, who is tied for #2 on the team in scoring with 10 points across the first two games, has notched all of her points in the fourth quarter this season.

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Painful night for hoops stars

Posted in Boys Basketball, tagged , , , , , on December 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Cole White, seen in a rare moment where a rival player is NOT smacking him in the face. (Jackie Saia photo)

This one hurt. Literally.

The Coupeville High School varsity boys’ basketball team suffered its first defeat of the season Saturday, falling 52-38 to visiting Toledo in a game marred by pain, lopsided officiating, and an offensive attack which sputtered at clutch time.

The good news is the rumble was a non-conference affair, so while the Wolves fall to 2-1 after a busy first week, it doesn’t put a ding in their pursuit of a league crown.

What did have a serious ding put in it was Cole White’s face, and Chase Anderson’s back.

The senior ballhandler, who has now bled in all three of his team’s games, got belted in the mouth by a Toledo elbow and was lost with Coupeville clinging to a one-point lead in the third quarter.

No foul was called on the play — not totally surprising on a night when the refs whistled the Wolves for 25 fouls to just 14 for the visitors — and White’s exit came at a point where he was the game’s leading scorer.

Anderson, who was making his season debut after sitting out the first two games with an injury, got launched into the floor by a pack of Riverhawks earlier in the third quarter.

The springy sophomore later returned to action, but only after first applying a large bag of ice to his back, while momentarily moving like a senior citizen who just lost an intense game of shuffleboard.

Toledo was big, it was physical, and it was a solid test for the Wolves, who responded strongly much of the way.

White and Ryan Blouin knocked down three-balls in the opening minutes, packaged around a slash to the hoop by top scorer Logan Downes as CHS opened with an 8-0 run.

The Wolves eventually got the lead out as far as 17-7 right before the end of the first quarter, with Blouin slapping home a breakaway layup, but the good times hit a pause after that.

With fouls piling up, Coupeville had to sit several key starters for large chunks of the first half, and Toledo took advantage.

An 11-0 surge, starting with two free throws to exit the first, allowed the Riverhawks to take the lead for the first time at 18-17 midway through the second frame.

White and Anderson, before they got bushwhacked, hit buckets to keep things close, but the visitors went in at the half up 25-21.

Coupeville slipped further behind at 29-21, then launched an 11-3 run of its own to knot things at 32-32.

Overcoming the exits of White and Anderson, the Wolves relied on hustle defensive plays from William Davidson and the Battlin’ Bronec Brothers, Hunter and Hurlee, while Downes connected on a three-ball off of an inbounds play.

Toledo slipped a pair of free throws through the net to claim the lead heading into the fourth, but Downes immediately responded with a runner, forging the last tie at 34-34.

That was when the rim turned unforgiving for the Wolves, however, with the visitors tearing off an 18-4 run to pull away.

Two three-point plays, one on a three-ball from the top, and one on a bucket and foul, sealed the deal.

Overall, Toledo hit 13 of 23 free throws, while Coupeville was 5-10.

While fans like to complain about the disparity in fouls, Wolf coach Brad Sherman is quick to shrug that off.

“A few hard-fought games this week,” he said. “Got a couple good wins, just had a tough one tonight.

“Mostly just proud of our boy’s toughness and the way they fight for each other.”

With the next game on the schedule not until Dec. 9, when the Wolves travel to Sultan, the team will have time to fine-tune things and get healthy.

“We will get back at it this week,” Sherman said. “Clean up a few things offensively, keep building on our stuff – and that starts with me.”

Downes paced Coupeville Saturday with 13 points, scoring 11 in the second half while haunted by foul trouble, with White knocking down 11 before being maimed.

Blouin (5), Anderson (4), Hurlee Bronec (3), and Nick Guay (2) also scored, with Zane Oldenstadt, Davidson, Quinten Simpson-Pilgrim, and Hunter Bronec also getting floor time.

Hurlee Bronec’s points, which came on a three-point play the hard way, were his first as a varsity player.

He is the 414th Wolf boy we’ve been able to document scoring in the program’s 107-year history.

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