W.F. West baseball rallies to edge Tumwater for 2A Southwest District title
Kolby Hansen hadn’t gotten the ball out of the infield before he stepped to the plate with two outs in the top of the seventh inning of Friday’s Class 2A Southwest District championship baseball game at the Ridgefield Outdoor Recreation Complex.
In his previous at-bat, the W.F. West High School’s senior designated hitter looked at a called third strike from Tumwater reliever Austin Sheldon.
With the score tied, 6-6, and Andrew Stafford at second base, Hansen knew his team could use a little more from him.
“I wanted to drive the ball on the ground to the right side,” he said.
He did just that, scorching a grounder between first and second to send Stafford sprinting around third. Stafford’s head-first slide eluded the tag of Tumwater catcher Nate Kassler and W.F. West had the run it needed to come away with the district title, 7-6.
“I got the fast ball I was looking for,” Hansen said. “I thought he was going to be called out, though, but felt great when he was safe.”
It was a game of missed opportunities for both teams with Tumwater leaving the bases loaded after tying the game in the sixth on a one-out walk to Cody Whalen, and W.F. West totaling eight runners left on base.
“We hit the ball well,” Tumwater coach Lyle Overbay said. “We didn’t get the key hits like they did. That’s baseball. Sometimes you hit it hard and it doesn’t fall in. It wasn’t for lack of effort on our part.”
Three of W.F. West’s stranded runners came in the top of the first when the Bearcats scored on a bases-loaded walk but did no further damage.
Tumwater broke loose for four runs in the bottom of the second, but W.F. West’s sophomore first baseman Gavin Fugate narrowed the margin to a single run with a two-run, opposite-field home run just inside the right field foul pole in the next inning off T-Birds starter Blake Smith.
“He was giving me off speed stuff the entire time, then he came with an outside fastball,” Fugate said.
Fugate later drove in a run to tie the game at 5-5 in the fifth on an infield single. Having homered just two innings before, he showed bunt on the first two pitches from Sheldon, who had just entered the game.
“I was just trying to get in the pitcher’s head, make him think we were doing something else,” he said.
Both teams had a rougher time than some would have expected advancing to the championship game. The best in the district in most eyes, they were put to the test by 2A Greater Saint Helen’s League foes in the afternoon semifinals.
Columbia River led most of the way and forced extra innings before falling to the Bearcats, 5-4. Tumwater needed an absolute pitching gem from Washington State commit Ryan Orr to get past Washougal, 1-0. Orr gave up just three hits and struck out 13.
“He’s so solid with his location” Overbay said. “He has high velocity and can mix it up with the off speed. He’s a bulldog. He’s going to come after you and keep it down in the zone and throw lots of strikes.”
“I was hitting my spots pretty well. I worked on my off speed pitches during the offseason. That’s definitely helped this year,” Orr said. “This was definitely one of the better games I’ve pitched this season.”
Overbay finished his first season as the T-Birds head coach 16-3.
“I couldn’t have asked for any more,” he said. “We had great leadership from the seniors. This was a special year.”
W.F. West coach Brian Bullock was also happy with his team’s ending.
“The competitiveness of our kids really came out in this post-season atmosphere we’ve been robbed of for awhile,” said Bullock, who had to watch the finish from a distance after he and an assistant were ejected for arguing balls and strikes during a T-Birds rally.
“It was really nice to see that every time we got pushed and our backs were against the wall that competitiveness came out.”
2A SOUTHWEST DISTRICT SOFTBALL
W.F. West 9, Rochester 1: After W.F. West’s Alisha Anderson watched her second-inning grand slam carry the center field fence, the joy in the senior’s face was unmistakable.
Not only did the home run widen her team’s lead to seven in the 2A Southwest District title game, it was Anderson’s second of the day, after a three-run blast lifted the Bearcats to a district semifinals win over Columbia River earlier Thursday afternoon in Chehalis.
“I think she sprinted the whole way around, because she almost lapped somebody,” W.F. West coach Caty Lieseke said with a laugh. “(It was) another one of those moments I wish I had on camera.”
W.F. West had played 2A Evergreen Conference rival Rochester twice during the regular season — both ending in Bearcat victories, though by two runs or fewer — but their victory Thursday had a much more decisive outcome.
After the Bearcats poured in a flurry of runs early on, Lieseke’s squad maintained their comfortable lead on the way to a convincing 9-1 win.
The victory capped off an undefeated season for a team fielding just three players with previous varsity experience.
“To see a bunch of young kids step up and take on what it means to be a part of Bearcat fastpitch, it’s kind of surreal,” Lieseke said. “It’s really, really incredible to watch a young group of kids do that.”
Aside from Anderson’s slam that put the game out of hand, W.F. West’s Saige Brindle checked in with a first-inning double that plated two and finished 2-for-4 on the night.
Ace pitcher Kamy Dacus settled in the circle for the Bearcats, allowing one run in the first inning on a Staysha Fluetsch RBI single before shutting out the Warriors the rest of the way.
Dacus allowed the one run on four hits while striking out 10 and walking one in a seven-inning complete game on 98 pitches.
W.F. West never trailed after a three-run first inning, and the Bearcats tacked on five more in the second.
“It was definitely the best approach we had taken against (Rochester) all season,” Lieseke said. “We were more patient in the box, and really took our time. Kids were getting good pitches to hit, rather than swinging at stuff they shouldn’t. That was an advantage. The experience was an advantage.”
2A SOUTHWEST DISTRICT BOYS SOCCER
Tumwater 2, Columbia River 1: Brett Bartlett believes this season’s T-Birds may be the best boys team he’s coached, good enough to survive a lackluster beginning to the championship game to finish an undefeated season (11-0-1) by hoisting the district trophy Saturday at home on the turf of Tumwater District Stadium.
“We came out a little bit flat at the start,” Bartlett said.
The Rapids took advantage, scoring in the 12th minute when Logan Simmons tapped in the rebound after a shot from Elliott McCaffery to take a 1-0 lead. They didn’t score again.
“We started to click around the 25th minute,” Bartlett said.
A minute later, the T-Birds got the equalizer.
Tumwater crossed a ball to Zack Schmidt on the left side. He one-timed it past a Rapids’ defender and into a corner of the net.
In the 65th minute, Schmidt lined up to take a corner kick and Tumwater recognized a chance to run one of its set plays, designed to force the defense to pick a side to mark Ta-Kashi Neilson at the goal line, then get him the ball on the other side. It worked and Neilson scored the decisive goal from point blank range.
Bartlett believes the disadvantages brought about by a pandemic-delayed season brought Tumwater’s spring 2021 team together like no squad that preceded it.
“Nothing was guaranteed,” he said. “We were just happy to be playing. They were very flexible and never got too high or too low.”
2A SOUTHWEST DISTRICT TRACK AND FIELD
Tumwater senior Noah Cunningham won both the 100-meter dash (personal-best 11.08 seconds) and long jump (21-5) at the 2A Southwest District track and field championships Thursday at Fishback Stadium in Washougal.
Tumwater junior Alyssa Duncan won both the long jump (personal-best 17-0 1/2) and triple jump (35-5 3/4).
Staff writers Lauren Smith and Tyler Wicke contributed to this report.
This story was originally published May 8, 2021 at 12:40 AM.