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Posts Tagged ‘playoffs’

Wolf boys clinch playoff berth, girls close

Posted in Basketball, tagged , , , , , on February 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Whatcha gonna do when the Wolves come for you?  (Bailey Thule photo)

The round robin decides everything.

While Coupeville High School basketball teams, and their closest rivals, can play up to 20 regular season games, only four of those rumbles dictate playoff participation.

The Northwest 2B/1B League currently houses four 1B schools — Darrington, Orcas Island, Concrete, and Mount Vernon Christian — and three 2B institutions — Coupeville, La Conner, and Friday Harbor.

When the postseason arrives, 2B and 1B split off and go their own ways.

For basketball, all four 1B schools make the playoffs, which began Thursday.

When it comes to 2B hoops, however, you have to be top two to get the call, since there are a lot less 2B schools in the region, making for a smaller postseason tourney.

Those two NWL teams, repping District 1, pair off with District 2’s Auburn Adventist Academy and Northwest Christian (Lacey), at bi-districts Feb. 13-18.

That event, held at Coupeville High School, offers two tickets to state for the boys this year and one for the girls.

D1/2 will get two state berths for the girls next year. Allegedly.

With that in mind, La Conner swept a pair of home games from Friday Harbor on Friday night, which officially clinches three of the four playoff berths.

On the boys’ side, Coupeville and La Conner are in, while Friday Harbor is eliminated after the Wolverines blew a 20-point lead and fell 59-57 to the Braves.

On the girls’ side, La Conner is in after a 65-18 romp, with Coupeville and Friday Harbor still fighting for the other spot.

Seeding is still up for grabs on both sides, however.

Coupeville closes the regular season next week, hosting La Conner Tuesday, Feb. 7, before island-hopping to Friday Harbor Feb. 10.

The Wolf boys clinch the #1 seed with a win in that first game.

Meanwhile, Coupeville’s girls need to sweep both games next week to have a shot at being #1 but need just a victory over Friday Harbor — who they beat 47-27 first time around — to claim the #2 seed.

If there any ties, teams will play a tiebreaker game, at a neutral site, Saturday, Feb. 11.

 

Where the round-robin sits heading into the final week:

 

Boys basketball:

School Vs. 2B
Coupeville 2-0
La Conner 2-1
Friday Harbor 0-3

 

Girls basketball:

School Vs. 2B
La Conner 3-0
Coupeville 1-1
Friday Harbor 0-3

 

Bi-district brackets:

Boys — http://www.nw1a2bathletics.com/m2/tourn.php?act=vt&tid=3810

Girls — http://www.nw1a2bathletics.com/m2/tourn.php?act=vt&tid=3809

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Pitch playoff rumble planned

Posted in Boys Soccer, tagged , , , , on October 30, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Andrew Williams and CHS soccer host a bi-district playoff game Tuesday night in Oak Harbor. (Morgan White photo)

November kicks off with high-stakes action.

Having won a three-team tiebreaker for a playoff berth, the Coupeville High School boys soccer team hosts Seattle-based Summit Atlas Tuesday, Nov. 1 at Oak Harbor’s Wildcat Memorial Stadium.

Game time for the loser-out bi-district playoff game is 6 PM.

Unlike regular season soccer games, the playoffs require fans to pony up hard-earned cash to gain entrance.

Prices are:

Adults or students without ASB – $8
Children (5-12) – $6
Senior Citizen (62+) – $6
Students with ASB – $6

Tickets can be purchased in person or online at:

https://gofan.co/app/events/760340?schoolId=WA86277

The winner of Tuesday’s game advances to play a road rumble against Mount Vernon Christian in a loser-out/winner-to-state game.

Coupeville sits at 5-8 on the season, while Summit Atlas, which has seemingly done its best to hide athletic info from the internet, may be 3-1-1.

At least that’s what it says on the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association site, though past history teaches us to take WIAA standings with a grain of salt.

Summit Atlas, which uses an Orca as its mascot, is listed as beating Rainier Christian 7-0, Sound Christian 9-0, and Crosspoint Academy 7-1.

A 6-2 loss to Auburn Adventist Academy is Summit’s lone listed defeat, while a 1-1 tie with Concordia Christian Academy likely pleased hardcore soccer fans who lust for pitch stalemates.

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Playoff puzzle looms for booters

Posted in Boys Soccer, tagged , , , , , on October 27, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Wolf seniors (l to r) Grant Steller, Aidan Wilson, Cameron Epp, and Reiley Araceley are not done just yet. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Now, it gets complicated.

Like maybe really, really, really complicated.

What we do know for sure is the Coupeville High School boys soccer team played a very strong first 30 minutes Thursday on Orcas Island, pushing the defending state champs to the brink.

Unfortunately for the Wolves, pitch contests are 80 minutes, and the last 50 belonged to the host Vikings, who turned a 1-0 deficit into an 8-1 win.

The loss, coming in its regular-season finale, drops Coupeville to 3-5 in Northwest 2B/1B League play, 5-8 overall.

And that’s where it gets complicated.

Of the nine schools to play boys soccer in the NWL, five advance to the playoffs.

Orcas (7-0 in league) faces La Conner (2-5) Friday, then heads to the postseason.

Friday Harbor (7-1), Mount Vernon Christian (6-2) and Grace Academy (4-4) are also playoff-bound.

Cedar Park Christian-Lynnwood (0-8) is eliminated, and La Conner will be as well unless they spring the upset of the year against Orcas.

If that should somehow happen (it won’t), we’d have a four-way tie for the fifth, and final, playoff berth, with the Braves joining Coupeville, Lopez Island, and Providence Classical Christian at 3-5.

But, even if La Conner gets routed (it will), that’s still a three-way tie, which means we need something more than a straight tiebreaker game to decide the last postseason slot.

What will it be?

Personally, I vote for a team eggnog chugging contest, on a moving ferry, in the style of a penalty kick shootout.

Player barfs, team out. Last team standing with spotless uniforms “wins.”

Some call me a genius. Others use different words…

Meanwhile, back in reality, the #5 spot will be decided, in some manner, likely Saturday, Oct. 29, with the winner advancing to host the #4 team from District 2 in a loser-out playoff game Monday, Oct. 31.

The winner of the Halloween night game advances to face Mount Vernon Christian in a loser-out, winner-to-state game either Nov. 1 or 2.

Details of the tiebreaker should be revealed after the Orcas vs. La Conner game, when everyone knows if it’s a three-team or four-team affair. Stay tuned.

Coupeville had a shot to deny the logjam at #5, as a win on Orcas Thursday would have left the Wolves in a fourth-place tie with Grace Academy at 4-4.

That still would have necessitated a tiebreaker, as the NWL #4 team automatically gets a loser-out, winner-to-state game, but it would have been a straight up two-team affair.

Enduring a fair amount of wind, the Wolves held Orcas scoreless for almost 30 minutes, taking the lead when Aidan Wilson banged home his ninth goal of the season off of a deflection.

That gives the Wolf senior 12 tallies for his high school career, breaking a tie with Zane Bundy and leaving Wilson as the sixth-best goal scorer in CHS boys soccer history.

Orcas eventually broke through, however, netting the tying goal on a penalty kick and the go-ahead score in stoppage time right before the halftime break.

A tense 2-1 affair fell apart in the second half, with the Vikings raining down six goals and showing why they are a strong favorite to win back-to-back state 2B/1B titles.

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Booter schedule a tricky lil’ thing

Posted in Boys Soccer, tagged , , , , on September 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Grant Steller and associates vie on the soccer pitch. (Morgan White photo)

Soccer, forever trying to confuse me.

If it’s not the mind-melting offside rule or the love of an 80-minute game ending in a scoreless tie, it’s the scheduling.

As in, while all of the games played by the Coupeville High School boy soccer squad this season are against fellow Northwest 2B/1B League schools, not all of them will count in the standings that way.

The Wolves have scrapped with Mount Vernon Christian, Cedar Park Christian-Lynnwood, and La Conner, winning the middle of those tilts.

And coming up next are home bouts with the top two NWL squads, Friday Harbor and defending state champion Orcas Island.

But, when that’s all said and done, while CHS will have five games in the win-loss column, none of them will have counted as league contests.

Instead, the final eight games of the regular season between Oct. 4-27, with one clash against each of the other eight schools to play boys soccer in the NWL, will be the “official” league games.

That stretch, and only that stretch, determines playoff seeding.

The quirk is a product of the fact the NWL picks up four outside schools — Lopez Island, Grace Academy, CPC, and Providence Classical Christian — for boys soccer, and boys soccer alone.

Those schools join Coupeville, MVC, Friday Harbor, Orcas Island, and La Conner, while NWL charter members Concrete and Darrington don’t field teams.

Having eight league rivals makes it nearly impossible to play each school twice.

NWL girls soccer, by contrast, has just four schools active in the sport — Coupeville, La Conner, MVC, and Friday Harbor, so six home-and-away league clashes are easy-peasy to schedule.

Orcas, Darrington, and Concrete don’t have female booters, and the league doesn’t import any outside girls squads to pad its numbers.

Technically, Lopez Island considers its soccer team co-ed, so Coupeville’s boys have faced an occasional girl during previous games.

In the end, Coupeville’s boys have a 13-game schedule, play the same team twice five times, but count only the last eight as league contests.

It also means when Friday Harbor KO’d Orcas earlier this week, handing the Viking boys their first home loss in five years, it didn’t have any impact on postseason seeding.

Their Oct. 11 rematch, however, could go a long way to deciding a league title.

In the end, Coupeville pitch guru Robert Wood looks at the whole affair with a bemused smile and a chuckle.

“Not sure why … don’t care either … that’s an administrative thing and I HATE admin work.”

And then he went back to describing the beauty of a scoreless tie.

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Softball sluggers smack Skagit

Posted in Little League, Softball, tagged , , , , on June 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

“We’re coming for all the wins! All of them, I said!!” (Allison Scarpo photos)

Adeline Maynes fires a laser.

They’re still very much in it to win it.

The Central Whidbey Little League Majors softball squad rallied Wednesday on its home field, crushing South Skagit 20-10 in a loser-out game at the District 11 all-star tournament.

The victory eliminates Skagit and sends the Wolves into the championship round for a rematch with Sedro-Woolley, which it lost to Tuesday.

Central Whidbey needs to win back-to-back games Thursday and Friday to earn a trip to the state tourney, while Sedro can get to the big dance with one more victory.

All games are set for Rhododendron Park, with 6 PM starts.

The Wolves attacked early and often against Skagit, raining down 10 hits while also eking out a steady series of walks.

Sydney Van Dyke slammed a double for the game’s big blow, with Capri Anter and Adeline Maynes both picking up a pair of singles.

Also collecting base-knocks were Ava Lucero, Rhylin Price, Emma Cushman, Cameron Van Dyke, and Amelia Crowder.

Chelsi Stevens dares the pitcher to try and get one past her.

Nine different Wolves scored, with Anter (4), Mayne (3), and the Van Dyke sisters (3 each) leading the way.

Haylee Armstrong and Lucero both tapped the plate twice apiece, with Chelsi Stevens, Price, and Cushman also coming around to score.

Alison Powers and Michelle Michaud round out the 12-player Wolf roster.

Stars of today, stars of tomorrow.

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