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Posts Tagged ‘Mason Grove’

Wolf netters swing into the big time!!

Posted in Boys Tennis, tagged , , , , on August 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Senior Jakobi Baumann heads up a scrappy Wolf tennis squad ready to take on the big boys in the Emerald City League. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

“We are the CHS team that has the toughest schedule.”

There is little doubt about that, as Ken Stange’s 14th year at the helm of the Coupeville High School boys tennis program arrives complete with an epic new challenge.

While other Wolf teams will face off with fellow North Sound Conference foes, the netters have a slightly different path to travel.

Coupeville and South Whidbey are the only schools in the new six-team league which play boys tennis, so they are linking up with the ultra-ritzy, ultra-competitive Emerald City League.

That puts the Wolves up against potentially the toughest tennis conference in all of 1A, one where private school players compete year-round in one sport and benefit from ready access to private coaches and indoor courts.

University Prep is the two-time defending team state champs, and the ECL has won five of the last six singles titles.

In four of the past six years, at least two ECL teams have finished in the top five in the team standings at the state tourney, with U Prep being in that exclusive group every season.

In other words, things have changed.

“It was nice winning two of four league titles in our old league (Olympic League), but that was then,” Stange said. “We can either complain about it, or we can work at getting better.

“I choose the latter.”

The new league also brings a format change, as the Wolves go from a three singles, four doubles set-up for varsity matches to two singles, three doubles.

With three fewer varsity spots available, the battle at practice will rage.

“We have quite a few returning players with experience,” Stange said. “There will be some stiff competition this season within our team.

“We lost our top players from last year and we are moving into a new league that is full of private schools. We have our work cut out for us, but we’re working hard to raise our collective game.”

Gone are #1 singles player Nick Etzell and #1 doubles duo Joey Lippo and William Nelson, but nine of the 12 players on the Wolf roster are returning letter winners.

Junior Mason Grove and senior Jakobi Baumann, who both played strongly a season ago, head up the team.

Joining them are Jaschon Baumann, Zach Ginnings, Drake Borden, Tiger Johnson, Koby Schreiber, Thane Peterson and Harris Sinclair, while three newcomers – James Wood, Jacob Burke and Andrew Aparicio – round out the roster.

Through good times and bad, big wins and tough losses, Stange has always approached his time on the court the same way – head up, wicked sense of humor intact and deeply committed to getting the best out of each of his players, regardless of their talent level.

“The new league raises expectations but we haven’t seen the competition yet. It should be challenging and fun,” he said. “I hope we can be competitive and be a solid part of our new league. I also hope we can get a couple of entries into the district tourney.

“This season will be a success if we can win a few matches and have some individual success,” Stange added. “The real success will be in whether or not we are able to improve our results in the second run through our league schedule.”

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Gaze upon prairie portraits!!

Posted in Baseball, Boys Soccer, Softball, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Jenna Dickson leads off our collection of spring sports portraits. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

Zach Ginnings

Alex Jimenez

James Vidoni

Mason Grove

Dawson Houston

Ben Smith

Ivy Leedy

Time for a little spring cleaning.

As the season winds down, I’m going through head shots snapped by John Fisken and trying to make sure 99.3% of them get used.

The eight above, covering softball, baseball and boys soccer, are ones that, for whatever reason, had yet to see the light of day.

Before you ask, there are no tennis pics because it’s a smaller team and I already used all their head shots.

And track? It’s a bigger team and no one snapped head shots, so I can’t use something I never had.

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Slugfest on the prairie!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , , on March 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »

   Johnny Carlson was a force at the plate and on the mound Thursday for the Coupeville JV baseball team. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

The sun was back, and it brought the offense with it.

A day after the Coupeville High School varsity baseball team was rained out, the Wolf JV had beautiful weather for its game Thursday, a day when the only thing raining down was runs.

How many runs you ask? A heck of a lot of runs.

31 to be exact, as visiting Sequim built a 12-run lead, then held off a furious Coupeville comeback and escaped with an 18-13 win.

The loss drops the Wolf JV to 0-2 on the season.

It was the kind of day when 95% of the players scored at least one run apiece.

OK, it’s probably simpler to just say Sequim third-baseman Julian Hernandez was the only player, out of 20 to see the field, who didn’t touch home.

He was 90 feet away in the first inning, but the Wolves denied him, and then every other player in uniform went and did what he couldn’t.

All 10 Wolves scored, with Jered Brown, Mason Grove and Drake Borden crossing the plate twice each and CHS racking up 15 hits on the afternoon.

Coupeville claimed its only lead of the game at 4-2 after piling up five of those base-knocks in the bottom of the first.

Brown, Grove, Jake Pease, Shane Losey and Johnny Carlson all put good metal to ball, as the Wolves looked like they might roll away with things.

Sequim managed to put a damper on things though, escaped the inning, then held CHS scoreless until the fourth as it built a 9-4 lead.

The Wolves chipped away for two runs in the fourth to pull back within three runs, then the fifth inning went nuclear on both sides of the ball.

Sequim erupted for nine runs in the top half of the inning, blowing the game open to an 18-6 tune, then promptly almost gave it all back.

Putting together five hits, including two from freshman Daniel Olson, Coupeville sent 12 batters to the plate and scored seven of them in the bottom of the fifth.

And then, as suddenly as the offense came, it fled again, with the two teams both failing to score a run across the final two innings.

Carlson, who came on in relief in the fifth, closed out the game on the mound, striking out two as he shut Sequim down in the sixth and seventh.

Coupeville’s hit parade was led by Brown and Grove, who each collected four hits, while Jacob Zettle, Gavin Straub and James Vidoni joined their teammates by scoring.

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Heart stopper to a heart breaker!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, tagged , , , , on February 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »

   Chris Smith’s Wolf boys JV basketball squad offered plenty of offensive fireworks Thursday, but couldn’t quite hold on for the win. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

A beautiful, thrilling gut punch.

Thursday night’s JV boys basketball rumble between Coupeville and visiting Klahowya hit all the emotions on the spectrum, getting early-arriving fans all worked up.

The only downside to an often-electrifying game was the final score, as the Wolves couldn’t hold on to a 12-point fourth quarter lead and fell 56-54 in overtime.

The loss drops the CHS young guns to 3-5 in Olympic League play, 4-14 overall.

For much of the game Thursday, Coupeville played like a fifth win would be a lock.

After a ho-hum first quarter, which ended in a 5-5 tie, but featured a teeth-rattling block by Ulrik Wells and a gorgeous little running hook shot from Sage Downes, things began to heat up.

Mason Grove dropped a three-ball right in a defender’s face to open the second, then Koa Davison decided it was time to rule the world, or at least the court.

The Wolf sophomore knocked down a trey off of a feed from Wells, hit a pair of free throws without making the net ripple in the slightest, then sank a second three-ball while on the move.

That shot sizzled through the net so fast, all three people working the scorekeeper’s table missed it, and had to retroactively credit Davison after a halftime visit from the Points Police.

Up 21-18 at the break, Coupeville rained down three-balls in the third and fourth (Grove and Downes each hit a pair, while Daniel Olson dropped in a really long one) and seized control of the game.

The Wolves stretched their lead out to 13 at one point, and seemed totally in control after David Prescott banked home a rebound to stake CHS to a 46-34 lead with four minutes to play.

The lead wasn’t big enough, however, as Klahowya clamped down on defense, used a press to its advantage, then got lucky on a couple of iffy shots.

Wells threw down a three-point play the hard way, corralling a long outlet pass and turning it into a bucket-and-free-throw, but the Eagles kept coming and the game slipped away from Coupeville.

Missed free throws down the stretch were a killer for both teams, but ultimately stung the Wolves worse and the two squads staggered into extra basketball knotted at 51-51.

The four-minute OT period was firmly split into two story-lines, and, unfortunately for CHS, they didn’t play out evenly.

Klahowya built up a five-point lead, while the Wolves failed to score until the final 45 seconds.

Gavin Knoblich lost his man on a drive to the hoop for a bucket, then added a free throw to pull Coupeville within 56-54, but that was it for any comeback hopes.

The Eagles badly missed two final free throws, but with no time outs and a running clock, Downes had to launch a potential game-winner from well behind the half-court line and his prayer wasn’t answered.

Seven different Wolves scored, with Grove making the nets kick for 13, which gives him 325 in 18 JV games.

Downes went off for 12, Davison collected nine and Knoblich (7), Wells (6), Olson (5) and Prescott (2) also scored.

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Wolves rumble with the big boys!!

Posted in Boys Basketball, tagged , , , , , on January 31, 2018| Leave a Comment »

   Coupeville players like Jake Pease put up strong effort Tuesday but couldn’t topple Sequim in a pair of games. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

It’s hard to beat a team that doesn’t beat itself.

In a virtual recreation of a game the two schools played early in the season, 2A Sequim played precision basketball Tuesday, dumping visiting Coupeville 65-41.

The non-conference loss drops the Wolf boys to 5-13 with two games to play.

CHS hosts Klahowya Thursday on Senior Night, then heads to Chimacum to face a win-less Cowboys squad in the season finale for both teams.

Sparring a Sequim squad which was virtually flawless Tuesday in all aspects of the game, with a special emphasis on note-perfect ball movement and crisp passes, the Wolves held their own for a solid two, maybe three, minutes.

A pair of free throws from Hunter Smith, coming on the heels of an electric three-ball from Cameron Toomey-Stout, knotted the game at 5-5 and anything was possible.

And then it wasn’t.

Using a 16-0 run which carried into the early moments of the second quarter, Sequim put the game out of reach and hit cruise control from there.

Joey Lippo, who took two hard falls in the game after taking shots to the ankle and face, stopped the assault with a bank shot off a nice dish from Hunter Downes, but it did little to slow Sequim.

After Smith followed Lippo’s bucket with a steal and breakaway layup, Coupeville couldn’t put together back-to-back buckets again until the final moments of the game.

With just a basket here, a basket there, always followed immediately by a Sequim score or two, the Wolves were unable to carve the lead down, instead watching it get stretched out to 27 at its peak.

Down 60-33, CHS reached down deep and made a gritty stand over the final 90 seconds, with Downes and Toomey-Stout each rattling home three-balls, packaged around another steal and breakaway bucket from Smith.

The game finished with the same margin of victory as when the teams met in early Dec. — 24 points. Back then, Sequim rolled to a 59-35 win on Whidbey.

Smith paced Coupeville with 19 points, running his career total to 795.

With two games to go, he needs 17 to pass Corey Cross (811) and claim 12th place on the Wolf boys career scoring chart.

Toomey-Stout, known for his intensity on defense, non-stop hustle and award-winning hair, dropped in a season-best 11 points, capped by a trio of treys from behind the arc.

Lippo, who was limping but unbowed, tossed in four, a figure matched by Ethan Spark, while Downes capped the scoring with his three-ball.

While he didn’t score, Wolf big man Kyle Rockwell gave a feisty pack of road fans a thrill when he twice lowered the boom on Sequim players, making sure they would properly remember being fouled.

JV toppled:

A close game became something else after halftime.

Trailing by nine at the break, Coupeville’s shooting touch failed after the break, allowing Sequim to use a scorching 40-9 surge to run away with a 65-23 win.

The non-conference loss drops the Wolf young guns to 4-13.

CHS put up six in the first quarter, including a three-ball from Sage Downes, then added eight in the second, but the second half was a whole ‘nother game.

Sequim toasted the net during a 29-9 third quarter, then closed the game with an 11-0 shutout in the fourth.

Mason Grove paced Coupeville with 11, including three bombs from behind the arc, while Ulrik Wells pounded down low for four points.

Sage Downes (3), James Vidoni (2), Koa Davison (2) and David Prescott (1) also scored.

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