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Posts Tagged ‘Klahowya’

We’re #2! A solid #2!!

Posted in Olympic League, One Year In, tagged , , , , , on May 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Makana Stone snatched Olympic League MVP honors while leading the Wolves, who won all nine league games by double digits. (John Fisken photos)

  Makana Stone snatched Olympic League MVP honors while leading the Wolves, who won all nine league games by double digits. (John Fisken photos)

Aaron Curtin, state caliber.

Aaron Curtin, state caliber.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

The first year of the all-new, all-exciting 1A Olympic League is all but done — softball is mid-way through its season and all the other sports are in the postseason, but all league games have been played for 2014-2015.

So, how did Coupeville High School do?

Let’s just say quality beats quantity.

Despite being the smallest of the four schools in the league (with just half the student body of Klahowya), the Wolves more than held their own in the 10 sports in which they compete as a team.

For this exercise, we are looking at football, volleyball, girls and boys soccer, girls and boys tennis, girls and boys basketball, softball and baseball.

Golf doesn’t count, as Christine Fields (who just won the Olympic League postseason tourney by 10 strokes, I might add) was a one-woman team.

She played against 1A/2A Cascade Conference competition during the regular season, when she trained and traveled with South Whidbey.

We’re also not counting track, which is largely an individual sport inside a team one.

With most meets involving multiple teams from 1A and 2A (and, sometimes 3A), team wins and losses have little meaning.

Seriously, go look at the Olympic League website and try and figure out how they compute track team records. It makes no sense.

P.S. — If we go by their convoluted computing, Coupeville is the 1A girls’ regular season track champs.

But all anyone really looks at is how individual athletes (and relay teams) do at the state meet, so we’re not adding track into this team tally.

The stats:

Student body size (WIAA numbers at start of the school year):

Klahowya (455)
Port Townsend (327)
Chimacum (237)
Coupeville (225)

Total league wins across the 10 sports:

Klahowya (52)
Coupeville (40)
Chimacum (23)
Port Townsend (20)

League titles:

Klahowya (5) Volleyball, girls soccer, boys tennis, baseball, boys soccer
Coupeville (2) Girls basketball, girls tennis
Chimacum (2) Boys basketball, softball
Port Townsend (1) Football

Best league record:

Coupeville girls basketball (9-0) **Wolf JV also went 9-0**
Klahowya baseball (9-0)

State titles (so far):

Klahowya girls soccer

More positives for Coupeville, you ask?

The Wolves may have lost the regular season boys’ tennis title, but they stormed back to dethrone Klahowya in the postseason league tourney.

Plus, unlike Chimacum and Port Townsend, they garnered at least one league win in every one of the 10 sports, just like Klahowya.

In the end, what can we take away from all this?

One, Klahowya is good, especially in soccer, but didn’t really dominate across the board as much as you might have expected with its size advantage.

It is not ATM or King’s, and the Wolves can compete with the Eagles in almost any sport, any night.

Two, the numbers back my feeling that we are back in a golden age for female athletes at CHS.

Both of the new league title banners going up on the gym wall come from feminine sweat, grit and hard work, and Wolf girls accounted for 60% (24 of 40) of Coupeville’s league wins in year one.

Now, the gentlemen had their moments.

The Wolves were the only team to beat league champ Port Townsend in football and senior netter Aaron Curtin is going to state as a singles player.

In the end, take this — year one was a very good start. Year two, if the Wolves, girls and boys, believe and work, should be even better.

You know what the league is now. Go take control of it, in every sport.

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Soon … very soon!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , , on May 8, 2015| Leave a Comment »

(Shelli Trumbull photo)

   As it heads into the postseason, the Wolf baseball squad is getting closer and closer to taking down the #1 team in 1A. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

Closer and closer.

Klahowya may be unbeaten (18-0), may be the #1 ranked 1A team in the coach’s poll, but there’s a big, bad Wolf coming up stealthily from behind, just waiting for its moment to pounce.

The Coupeville High School baseball squad has played its Olympic League rivals three times this season — a fourth meeting could be looming in the district playoffs — and they have narrowed the gap each time.

After dropping the first meeting 10-2, they shaved the margin to 3-1 in the middle game, and then came agonizingly close Thursday, falling 1-0 in a game decided by one pitch that got away.

The loss dropped Coupeville to 9-9 overall, 5-4 in league play.

The Wolves now kick-off the postseason with a home playoff game Saturday (12 PM) against Cascade Christian, the #3 seed out of the Nisqually League.

Staff ace Aaron Curtin will be on the mound for CHS and it’s a loser-out game.

Win, and Coupeville advances to the double elimination portion of districts and would be just a single win away from making it back to the state tourney for the second straight season.

Trying to ruin Klahowya’s Senior Night festivities, the Wolves came dangerously close, but couldn’t get the one hit they needed to break things open.

In a game of few hits (Coupeville had four, Klahowya three), the Wolves twice had a runner at third, but failed to bring him home.

Kyle Bodamer and Clay Reilly lashed back-to-back two-out singles in the second, then moved up on a passed ball, but were left hanging when the next batter struck out.

Keeping alive the day’s trend of not getting the offense started until there were already two outs, Coupeville had another shot in the third.

Curtin bashed a double, then went to third when Carson’s Risner’s grounder was thrown away by Klahowya’s third baseman.

Unfortunately, the ball bounced right back on the field, forcing Curtin to hold up at third, and the Wolves sputtered with a ground out to end the brief rally.

Klahowya’s lone run came in the first, when the Eagles used a single, a stolen base, a fielder’s choice and a mix-up between Wolf hurler Hunter Smith and Risner to plate a runner.

The freshman pitcher tried to take the blame, calling it a wild pitch, while the senior backstop demurred, claiming it was a passed ball.

With Wolf hurlers Smith and Aaron Trumbull combining to limit Klahowya’s offense, the Eagles only really had one other scoring opportunity, but Josh Bayne put the kibosh on that.

With runners at the corners and one out in the sixth, a Klahowya runner tried to tag and come home on a short sac fly, but Bayne came up firing from center and terminated him in short order.

While he would have enjoyed messing up the Eagles perfect season, Coupeville coach Willie Smith was generally pleased with what he saw.

“We played really well, getting very good pitching and strong defense but once again, we just couldn’t get a hit when we needed one,” he said. “Other than getting the win, I was pretty happy with how we played.

“We approached this like it was a playoff game and that’s what it felt like, so we feel pretty mentally prepared for Saturday and if we can manage to get some guys on with less than two outs, I feel like we can produce some offense to go with our pitching and defense.”

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CJ Smith gets “filthy!!”

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , on April 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Wolf hurler CJ Smith delivered a strong pitching performance Wednesday (Shelli Trumbull photo)

CJ Smith delivered a strong pitching performance Wednesday, one that made a teammate yell “That was filthy!” after a strikeout. (Shelli Trumbull photo)

CJ Smith was magnificent, but it wasn’t quite enough.

Despite a stellar game from the junior hurler, the Coupeville High School baseball squad came up just short of upending the #1 team in 1A Wednesday, falling 3-1 to visiting Klahowya in a game that could have easily gone the other way.

With Smith dealing on the mound (“That was filthy!” screamed one of his teammates after a nasty strikeout), the Wolves, now 7-8 overall, 3-3 in Olympic League play, had their chances.

“One of the better pitching performances we’ve had this season,” said CHS coach Willie Smith. “CJ mixed it up, never lost his composure and really kept them guessing.

“He stepped up big for us, as he has done all season.”

Unfortunately, the Eagles (14-0, 5-0) managed to find just a few chinks in Coupeville’s armor and exploit them for the few runs they would need.

Klahowya cracked a scoreless tie in the third, using a single, a passed ball and an error — on a play where the Wolf fielder had a tough read on the ball with the runner moving right in front of him.

The Eagles then added two in the fourth, taking advantage of a blown rundown play.

Coupeville had the runner nailed, but the player who was supposed to backup the play failed to cover the bag, letting the dead-in-the-water Eagle slide into second as another runner shot across home plate.

A long, corkscrew RBI single that landed just a fraction inside the left field foul line plated Klahowya’s final run.

But while the visitors scratched out a few runs, CJ Smith recovered each time and bore down, refusing to let the Eagles break out a big inning.

Helping him were three standout defensive plays.

Wolf catcher Carson Risner threw out a runner trying to steal second to kick the game off, Aaron Curtin made a spectacular sliding catch in left and Josh Bayne notched an impressive double play.

Bayne corralled a shot to center, then came up firing, gunning down a lollygagging Klahowya runner who had drifted way too far off of first to admire his teammate’s moon-ball.

While their defense was generally solid, the Wolves struggled at the plate, garnering just one hit.

It was a well-hit single to center from lead-off hitter Cole Payne in the first inning, and it would be their only base knock.

Payne and Bayne each walked twice, with Payne eating dirt after being plunked on the brim of his batting helmet by a wild pitch, but that was it for a very limited offensive attack.

Coupeville’s lone run came in the sixth, when Payne zipped home on a squeeze play.

Unfortunately, the Wolves left runners stranded at second and third with an inning-ending strikeout, one of 11 whiffs they absorbed in the game.

Still, pushing the state’s #1 team in a game where one play could have changed the outcome was a huge step back up after Coupeville’s previous game, when they fell to a previously winless Chimacum squad.

“We played with the right attitude today,” Willie Smith said. “Now we need to keep that going.”

With three regular season games left — one each against league rivals Port Townsend, Chimacum and Klahowya — the Wolves want to hold onto the #2 seed out of the conference, which would give them a home playoff game May 9.

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Close, but no cigar!!

Posted in Boys Soccer, tagged , , , on April 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Josh Datin

   Even with a loss Tuesday, Josh Datin and the Wolf booters sit in second place in the 1A Olympic League, just a half game out of first.

They’ve been bumped from the penthouse, but they can still get back in.

After falling 3-0 at Klahowya Tuesday, the Coupeville High School boys’ soccer squad is no longer alone in first place in the 1A Olympic League.

The loss drops the Wolves to 2-1 in league play (3-6 overall), while the Eagles ride the win to 2-0 (9-1-2 overall) and bounce up to claim the top slot, at least for the moment.

With three league games left — two against Port Townsend (1-1, 2-6) and a rematch with Klahowya — Coupeville sits in second place and controls its own playoff destiny.

The top three teams in the four-team conference advance to the postseason, with Olympic #1 and #2 both hosting their playoff openers.

While the Klahowya boys may not be the equal of their school’s girls squad, which won the state title this year, the Eagles are clearly the favorite in the league and they took care of business Tuesday.

Coupeville battled them to a scoreless tie in the first half, but couldn’t hold on after the break.

“We lost to a very good team,” said Wolf coach Kyle Nelson. “Overall we came away feeling pretty good about our effort.

“We will be playing them again on Monday (May 4), and we will try to put together a full game and see if we can get a win.”

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No offense? No win!!

Posted in Softball, tagged , , , , , on April 22, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Freshman catcher Lauren Rose had a stellar defensive game Tuesday. (John Fisken photo)

Freshman catcher Lauren Rose had a stellar defensive game Tuesday. (John Fisken photo)

The bats never woke up.

Still slumbering after a long road trip, the aluminum didn’t have much pop Tuesday for the Coupeville High School softball squad as it suffered a 9-1 conference loss at Klahowya.

The defeat dropped the Wolves to 3-6 overall, 2-1 in Olympic League play.

“We had a slow offensive game and struggled to get our bats around,” said CHS coach Deanna Rafferty.

Klahowya went the opposite way, crushing the second pitch in the bottom of the first for an out-of-the-park home run.

That blow seemed to derail the Wolves a bit.

“That would rattle any pitcher,” Rafferty said. “I know the girls are a little down on themselves over their batting and it is understandable.

“With a couple missed plays and overthrows defensively, we needed to make up for it offensively and that’s where we’re lacking.”

Coupeville’s best mini-bursts of offense came via singles off of the bats of Tiffany Briscoe, Robin Cedillo and Mckayla Bailey, while Bailey brought in her team’s only run with a sac fly that plated Cedillo.

Hailey Hammer twice whacked shots to the furthest reaches of the outfield, only to have both blows chased down by Eagle outfielders.

Wolf hurler Katrina McGranahan whiffed four, while the Wolves pulled off a couple of web gems behind her.

Catcher Lauren Rose terminated three runners with strong throws, with the best play coming when she fired to Bailey at short, then Bailey immediately came back home with the ball, allowing the plucky freshman backstop to slap on the tag.

Coupeville returns to action Thursday, when it hosts league rival Port Townsend (4 PM), a squad it beat earlier this season.

“We’re looking forward to our home game and we’re ready for a win,” Rafferty said.

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