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A new day dawns!!

Posted in Football, tagged , , , , , on September 1, 2018| 1 Comment »

Making his first start as a varsity QB Friday, Dawson Houston tossed two TD passes as Coupeville drilled Port Townsend 28-18. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Ryan Labrador relaxes with some sweet, sweet victory cake. (Erin Straub photo)

Sean Toomey-Stout (left), Jake Pease (30) and Shane Losey combined to score four touchdowns. (Pam Pease photo)

It was just one win, maybe, but it felt like more than that.

Much more.

With 16 players in uniform, and every one of them making an impact, the Coupeville High School football squad kicked off a new season, under a new coaching staff, by slaying the beast which has haunted their gridiron dreams in recent years.

Five straight losses to Port Townsend, dating back to 2014, by a combined score of 270-32, was rough to endure.

But a lot of that evaporated in a mighty roar Friday, as the Wolves jumped, danced, and then hustled to the ferry on foot, celebrating a 28-18 win in which they never trailed and thoroughly dominated.

It made a winner of new coach Marcus Carr and his staff, and was the first time the CHS football squad had topped the RedHawks since Sept. 26, 2014.

After that win came blowout loss after blowout loss against Port Townsend, including three consecutive shutouts.

Those days are done, however.

CHS might not have been perfect on opening night — how many teams are? — but the Wolves played inspired ball, refused to bend, and put the hammer down when it mattered most.

Dawson Houston made a huge splash in his first-ever start as a varsity QB, Alex Turner ripped heads off and let the bodies hit the floor, Gavin Straub showed off the softest hands in the stadium, and that was just the start.

Though towering over them all was Sean Toomey-Stout, back after missing the final five games of his sophomore year with a devastating injury.

Showing no rust, no fear and no mercy, “The Torpedo” annihilated his foes.

200+ yards and two touchdowns as a rusher.

An interception in which he leaped out of the stadium to spear the ball.

Kickoff returns in which the only way the RedHawks could stop him from taking it to the house was to grab his shirt tail and hold on for dear life until Toomey-Stout’s jersey ripped nearly in half.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning.

The game started with two strong Coupeville defensive stands in which it forced punts, packaged around one of the few Wolf mistakes, a botched hand-off that led to a fumble and turnover.

Handed the ball back a second time, after a godawful RedHawk pooch punt that Wolf lineman Isaiah Bittner boldly jumped onto, CHS settled down.

Toomey-Stout ripped off runs of 12 and 19 yards, while Andrew Martin lowered his head and bloodied some noses on a bull-run that shoved the PT defense all the way back to the ferry line.

That set up Houston’s first pass of the season, a sweet hook-up with Shane Losey for 27 yards on 4th and 11.

Houston dropped the ball into a tiny crack between defenders, and Losey (who the road announcers kept calling Loosey all night…) did the rest.

Snatching the ball out of mid-air, he juggled it, then pulled it safely into his chest as he bounced off the ground.

Cradling the ball like it was an egg ready to hatch, he landed right in front of a ref who seemed genuinely surprised to see the play completed without the ball squirting loose.

Once could be a fluke, but twice is the start of a beautiful partnership.

Houston then spun a 12-yard TD strike into the right corner of the end zone, where Losey pulled the lob in while in mid-stride.

A botched extra point that went a millimeter low and caught the crossbar before skipping away kept the score at 6-0, but it was first blood in a game in which the Wolves would never trail.

Port Townsend missed on its first chance to tie, when Toomey-Stout, bouncing like a kangaroo jacked up on Red Bull, went airborne and picked off a potential TD pass right outside the end zone.

While the RedHawks finally did break through, netting a 10-yard scoring strike with 46 ticks left in the half, Coupeville’s defense stood strong, stuffing the two-point conversion run.

The game might have been knotted 6-6 at the half, but as the teams exited the field, the difference in energy between the two squads was easy to see.

Cue the second-half KO, as Toomey-Stout came out of the locker room with the swagger of Mike Tyson in his prime.

“The Torpedo” took the opening kick back up the right side, tripped up at the very last second by Port Townsend’s kicker, who laid out to save the touchdown.

For about five seconds.

Very next play, Toomey-Stout bolted up the middle for his first TD run of the season, a 10-yard jaunt that he covered in about three steps as mom Lisa came unglued, perhaps permanently damaging her vocal cords as she out-screamed the entire Port Townsend fan base by herself.

A two-point conversion pass from Houston to Gavin Knoblich was huge, stretching the lead back out to 14-6, and the early score, coming in less than 14 seconds off the third-quarter clock, set the tone for the rest of the game.

Port Townsend rallied to within 14-12 on a miracle run by its freshman quarterback, who slipped through 327 tackles on one play, on fourth down, but the RedHawks could never get the equalizer.

The hosts botched the two-point conversion, had a potential touchdown ripped away later when Toomey-Stout chased down a runner from behind, passing three of his own teammates as he came close to matching twin sister Maya’s gazelle-like speed, and couldn’t stop Coupeville when it mattered.

Houston connected with Jake Pease on a 10-yard TD strike — set up by a 56-yard run from Toomey-Stout — then “The Torpedo” closed out Coupeville’s scoring with a 42-yard TD jaunt.

His final scoring run was made possible by his teammates successfully recovering a short kick by the RedHawks with five minutes to play.

It wasn’t a straight-up onside kick, but close, as Port Townsend tried to bounce the ball off of a CHS player and recover.

Instead, Straub timed the ball perfectly, pulled it in, and went to the ground, never bobbling it even as he was mobbed by the RedHawks.

G-3 not only earned the “good hands” award, he netted a huge high-five from Wolf assistant coach Kwamane Bowens as he exited the field.

In a game in which the Wolf offense broke things open with big plays, the defense had the final statement as Knoblich and Dane Lucero delivered spleen-rupturing sacks.

While Toomey-Stout was pasting anyone who got close, linemen Matt Stevens, Ryan Labrador, Martin, Turner, Pease and Co. thoroughly clogged things up, repeatedly gang-tackling the RedHawk runners into submission.

Toss in a fairly spectacular throw by the Wolf cheerleaders at the very end, in which Mica Shipley seemingly exploded out of a cannon, touched the overcast skies, then dropped back into the waiting embrace of her teammates, and the night belonged to Coupeville.

All that was missing was a dance party, and, by the time the Wolves and their fans were back in the CHS parking lot, sure enough, one was starting.

It might be early, but undefeated is undefeated, and slaying the beast is a heck of a way to kick things off.

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Exit in style!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , , , on May 2, 2018| Leave a Comment »

   Matt Hilborn and Coupeville baseball stomped Port Townsend Wednesday, and have won 11 of their last 12 games. (Photos by JohnsPhotos.net)

   Coupeville’s seniors went 8-0 at home this year. L to r, Hunter Smith, Jake Hoagland, Jacob Zettle, Kyle Rockwell, coach Chris Smith, Julian Welling, Joey Lippo, Nick Etzell, James Vidoni.

They love it when a plan comes together.

Other than a couple of bobbled balls in the field, the Coupeville High School baseball squad was on point Wednesday, closing the regular season with an emphatic win.

Coasting to a five-inning 11-0 thumping of visiting Port Townsend, the Wolves finished 8-1 in Olympic League play en route to their second conference title in three seasons.

Sitting at 14-4 overall, the Wolves have won seven straight and 11 of their last 12 games.

In the past decade, only one CHS hardball squad, the 2014 team which went to state, has won as many games in a single season.

That ’14 unit finished 14-11 and was eliminated by Rochester in the round of 16.

This year’s Wolves, who open the playoffs May 8 in Tacoma against Charles Wright Academy, came dangerously close to going 17-1, with three of their four losses by a single run.

Two of those defeats came to 2A schools.

Coupeville also finished a flawless 8-0 on its home diamond, with Wednesday’s win coming on a Senior Night in which eight Wolves were honored.

One of those 12th graders, Olympic League MVP-in-waiting Hunter Smith, closed out his home career in style.

Captain Cool tossed a six-strikeout no-hitter from the mound, then knocked in four runs while reaching base in all four of his plate appearances.

And, just to make sure local fans would really remember how amazingly consistent and explosive he has been over the past four years, Smith pulled off maybe the most stunning play of his career.

It came in the bottom of the first, after he had been plunked with a pitch.

A quick steal got Smith to second, a passed ball nudged him to third, and walks to Julian Welling and Dane Lucero juiced the bags and set the stage.

With Jake Hoagland at the plate, Smith, not betraying a single emotion on his carefully-crafted game face, edged down the base-path, teasing and tormenting the flustered RedHawk hurler.

He stepped backwards, for just a second, perhaps arched an eyebrow ever so slightly at coach/dad Chris Smith, who was bobbing in the third-base coaching box, and then … HOLY CRUD ON A FREAKIN’ STICK!!

Hunter Smith bolted down the line, a burst of fiery speed shining brighter than the blazing sun that was scorching the prairie.

Port Townsend’s bench screamed, Coupeville’s bench screamed twice as loud, and at least one Wolf parent fell out of their seat. Maybe more.

As Hoagland did a nimble backwards jump away from the plate at the last second, Captain Cool slid under the late tag, pulling off the most difficult play in baseball.

It was just one run, maybe, but, in that instant, he went from mere legend to mythic figure.

The kind of dude who can toss a no-hitter AND steal home on the same day, and make you imagine Matthew McConaughey leaning against a tree down the right field line, chewing on a wheat stalk, murmuring “alright, alright, alright, my man.”

If the game had been a movie script, that would have been the finale.

Instead, back in reality, the Wolves still had four innings to play and 10 more runs to score, so they got at it quickly.

The only base-runners Port Townsend could get aboard came thanks to a handful of errors by the normally sure-handed Wolf infielders.

They made up for the occasional bobble, however, such as in the top of the second, when Matt Hilborn triggered a bang-bang double play to erase a rare RedHawk base-runner.

Scooping up a bouncer at short, he didn’t have time to transfer the ball from glove to hand, so merely flipped it from his glove while on the run.

The ball plopped into Joey Lippo’s hand, the Wolf second-baseman spun and fired a dart to Welling at first, and presto, a “rally” spiked before it could begin.

With Smith humming on the mound, Coupeville tacked on five runs in the second, added two in the third and put a stamp on things with three more in the fourth.

The Wolves, being extremely patient at the plate, eked out a string of walks to set the table in the second, with a bases-loaded free pass to Smith making it 2-0.

After that, it was time for the big boppers to eat.

Welling smoked a two-run single to left, Lucero bopped an RBI single that dropped in front of a charging outfielder and Hoagland arced a long sac fly to cap things.

In the third, Coupeville got creative, with Nick Etzell pulling off an inspired bit of base-running.

Standing in for Wolf catcher Gavin Knoblich, who rapped a one-out single, Etzell, who hasn’t been able to play in the field in recent games as he rehabs a PE-related arm injury, made sure to get his bit of the spotlight.

After stealing second, minus his wrist guard after an over-zealous ump made him remove it, Etzell took third on a passed ball, then shot for home when another ball got away from the Port Townsend catcher.

Well, he shot for two steps, at least.

Unfortunately, the RedHawk backstop recovered the ball quicker than expected and seemed to have Etzell dead to rights.

Au contraire, mon frère.

Etzell faked back towards third, drew the throw, then narrowly missed snapping his own ankles as he spun on a dime, streaking home to beat the return throw.

From there the Wolves coasted home with Smith swatting an RBI single, before a bases-loaded walk to Lippo and a two-run single from Smith in the fourth wrapped the onslaught.

Knoblich and Smith paced the offense, each delivering a pair of base-knocks.

The win marked the final home game for Wolf seniors Kyle Rockwell, Jacob Zettle, James Vidoni, Lippo, Smith, Etzell, Hoagland and Welling.

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First place, here we come!!

Posted in Baseball, tagged , , , , , on April 25, 2018| Leave a Comment »

   Dane Lucero, here hitting in an earlier game, got the win on the mound Wednesday as Coupeville thrashed Port Townsend. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Right where they want to be, in the driver’s seat.

Taking care of business Wednesday, the Coupeville High School baseball squad bushwhacked host Port Townsend 17-6, clinched a playoff berth and moved into sole possession of first place in the 1A Olympic League.

With the victory, their fourth straight and eighth in their last nine games, the Wolves soar to 5-1 in conference action, 11-4 overall.

That puts them a half game up on Chimacum (4-1, 6-7) which visits Whidbey Friday for the rubber match in a three-game season series.

The Cowboys won 5-4 in the rain at home two weeks ago, then the Wolves returned the favor 1-0 in the prairie sun Monday afternoon.

Port Townsend (1-4, 1-9) and defending league champ Klahowya (1-5, 2-12) bring up the rear, and neither team can catch Coupeville, guaranteeing the Wolves one of the league’s two playoff berths.

While the RedHawks have only won a single game in the past three years, they’ve pushed CHS this season.

The first time the teams faced, the Wolves eked out a 3-1 win, and Wednesday, Coupeville trailed 4-1 after two innings of play.

CHS had gone down one-two-three in the top of the first, then given up three runs in the bottom half of the inning thanks to a couple of errors and some timely PT base-knocks.

The Wolves got one run back in the second, with Julian Welling plunking a single and coming around to score on a ground-out by Dane Lucero, but the RedHawks immediately answered with a score of their own.

Instead of panicking, Coupeville went to work, ramming home three runs in the third to tie things up, before exploding for five in the fourth and eight in the fifth to wrap things.

The Wolves set the table in the third with a Matt Hilborn single, a Joey Lippo walk, then a double steal from the fleet-footed duo.

With runners in scoring position, Hunter Smith came up big, drilling a two-run single, before coming around to score on an RBI single off of Welling’s smoking-hot bat.

With the game knotted at four, Lucero, who whiffed four, bore down on the mound and held the RedHawks relatively in check the rest of the way.

Not content to sit on a narrow lead, the Wolves super-charged their bats heading into the fourth and promptly began crushing the snot out of the Port Townsend pitching.

Jake Hoagland, who obviously ate his Wheaties, bashed a pair of triples, one in the fourth, one in the fifth, with the first one narrowly missing being a round-tripper.

Coupeville actually had a trio of three-baggers on the day, as Hunter Smith jacked one as well.

With the ball flying off the bats of the Wolves, the RedHawks helped out a bit, juggling balls and letting the speedy Wolves turn singles into two or three bases at a time.

CHS finished with 13 hits, with five different hitters racking up at least two base-knocks apiece.

Hilborn (1B, 1B, 2B) led the attack, while Hoagland (two triples) and Smith (1B, 3B) went deep and Lippo and Welling each collected a pair of singles.

Jake Pease and Lucero rapped singles to round out the hit parade, while Lippo had the web gem o’ the day, spearing a liner at second while on a dead sprint.

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Sweet revenge, sweeter win!!

Posted in Boys Soccer, tagged , , , , , , on April 24, 2018| 2 Comments »

   Aram Leyva scored twice Tuesday as Coupeville soccer drilled Port Townsend 3-1, all but clinching a playoff berth for the Wolves. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Channeling Obi-Wan in Star Wars, the Coupeville High School boys soccer team showed remarkable resiliency Tuesday, and the rewards will be huge.

Four days after absorbing a rough loss at Port Townsend, the Wolf booters rebounded to drill the visiting RedHawks 3-1 Tuesday, capturing their biggest win in the four-year history of the 1A Olympic League.

The victory, which snapped a five-game winless streak, lifts CHS to 4-3 in conference action, 5-6-2 overall.

It also gives the Wolves two wins in three games against Port Townsend this season, and all but clinches second-place in the Olympic League, and the playoff berth that comes with that finish.

After three teams made the postseason annually between 2015-2017, this year only two squads will make the cut, and it would take an epic collapse for Coupeville to not join league champ Klahowya.

Port Townsend (3-4, 3-8) and the Wolves both finish with games against Klahowya (6-0, 9-2-1) and Chimacum (0-6, 0-10).

One CHS win or one PT loss clinches second-place for the Wolves, who finished third in each of the previous three seasons.

It would take two Moses-parting-the-Red-Sea-style miracles for the RedHawks to slide past Coupeville and make the postseason.

First, Chimacum, which has been outscored 101-2 this season (not a typo) would have to beat the Wolves.

Then, Port Townsend would have to break Klahowya’s perfect 27-0 run in Olympic League games.

If BOTH those things happen Friday, I’ll retire on the spot.

So, while the Wolves can’t fully celebrate yet, they took care of most of the dirty work Tuesday, controlling the game from start to finish.

The first half was a scoreless battle for 39+ minutes, with CHS defenders Uriah Kastner and Hunter Downes coming up huge, scrambling to snuff out RedHawk opportunities with quick feet work (and the occasional hip check into the stands).

Coupeville actually had more chances to score, but was thwarted repeatedly by a ref who knew one call – “off-sides” – and used it frequently.

His calls erased one Wolf goal, when Aram Leyva beat the Port Townsend goalie high only to have the score waved off.

Aram’s cousin, laser-shot-firing Derek Leyva, made up for it, though, rifling home the game’s first score late in stoppage time.

After muscling his way through two defenders, the slender assassin rattled the ball home, netting his 21st goal of the season.

That broke the CHS boys single-season scoring mark set in 2016 by Derek’s other cousin, Abraham Leyva, and leaves him just shy of Mia Littlejohn’s school record of 27 goals in one campaign.

Having broken the record, Derek Leyva turned into an assist machine in the second half, setting Aram Leyva up twice.

The first score came on a throw-in by Sam Wynn that Derek corraled, then skipped across the field right onto Aram’s toe.

One quick swing of his powerful leg later, it was 2-0 Wolves and the game looked to be in the bag.

But Port Townsend was plucky, and finally broke through with a little over 14 minutes left in the game.

A ferocious scrum broke out in front of the net, and, in the melee, a RedHawk managed to poke the ball past an otherwise-occupied Wolf goalie Dewitt Cole.

With the lead cut to 2-1, Cole and his defensive crew went into lock-down mode.

Axel Partida, Teo Keilwitz and Co. were impenetrable the rest of the game, blunting Port Townsend’s best efforts, while Cole made a couple of nimble late saves.

Just to make sure things would stay the way they were supposed to, the Leyva boys broke out another beauty with 10 minutes to play.

Derek crushed another crossing pass, though this time Aram came cartwheeling in, using his head to bank the ball past the flailing RedHawk net-minder.

With two scores on the afternoon, Aram ran his season total to nine goals, as the cousins have combined for 30 of the team’s 47 goals.

That leaves Coupeville just one score shy of the 2016 team, which scored 48 times, the most by any Wolf boys team in the last decade.

While he’s not looking past Chimacum, no matter what their troubles might be, Coupeville coach Kyle Nelson was quite happy to marinate (for a moment, at least) in finally exorcising the RedHawks.

The Wolves came up empty all seven times they played Port Townsend between 2015-2017 before taking two of three this time around.

“That’s huge. Nice to finally turn it around and take down our nemesis,” he said. “The games have been close with them, always, but today we brought the energy we didn’t have for some reason Friday.

“We talked about that before the game,” Nelson added. “And they really responded!”

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Injuries plague plucky booters!!

Posted in Boys Soccer, tagged , , , , on April 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »

   An ankle injury has kept CHS soccer captain Ethan Spark sidelined for the last week-and-a-half. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Three men down, they came up two goals short.

Missing starters Ethan Spark, James Wood and Sam Wynn, who have combined for eight goals this season, the Coupeville High School boys soccer squad fell 5-3 Friday in a high-scoring affair at Port Townsend.

The loss drops the Wolves to 3-3 in Olympic League play, 4-6-2 overall, and into a tie with the RedHawks (3-3, 3-7) for second-place in the four-team conference.

With Coupeville’s defeat, Klahowya (6-0, 9-2-1), which has a three-game lead with three to play, and holds tiebreakers on CHS and PTHS, clinches its fourth-straight league crown.

With Chimacum (0-6, 0-8) mired in the basement, both the Wolves and RedHawks seem likely to earn playoff berths, but the rubber game of their three-game season series will likely decide who gets the #2 playoff seed.

In an unusual twist of scheduling, that game arrives almost immediately, as Port Townsend travels to Coupeville Tuesday for a 4 PM game.

Barring a miracle, the Wolves will almost certainly be without Spark for that clash.

The senior captain severely sprained an ankle competing for a ball in practice a week-and-a-half ago, said mom Kali Barrio, and has been unable to bear weight on the leg ever since.

The one positive is x-rays came back negative on a fracture.

“We’re hoping for no torn ligaments, but only time will tell and a possible MRI,” Barrio said.

Missing key players, the Wolves came out a bit flat.

“We failed to match their energy and intensity, and Port Townsend seemed to get the lucky bounce,” said CHS coach Kyle Nelson.

Down 2-1 at the half, the Wolves swapped goals with the RedHawks in the second half and were still within 4-3 with 15 minutes on the clock.

Coupeville was unable to get the equalizer, however, and gave up a final score in the waning moments.

One bright spot Friday came courtesy sophomore sensation Derek Leyva, who torched the RedHawks for two goals while playing on his birthday.

The scores were #19 and #20 on the season for the first-year Wolf, and the second tally ties him with cousin Abraham Leyva for the CHS boys single-season scoring record.

Coupeville’s other score was helped along by its rivals, as Port Townsend inadvertently scored an “own goal.”

With 44 goals and three regular-season games remaining, this year’s team is in hot pursuit of the 2016 Wolf booters.

That squad, led by Abraham Leyva’s record-setting senior season, scored 48 goals, the most CHS has recorded in the past decade.

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