A state tournament to remember

Published 8:37 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

TACOMA- The road to the state title game for Mount Si was filled with heart-stopping action that will surely lead to lifelong memories for the players involved.

In the first game on Friday afternoon, the skies, which had been threatening all morning, cleared and the Wildcats scored a dramatic 1-0 victory over the Anacortes Seahawks, which moved Mount Si into the round of eight.

Although a team effort, it was an incredible performance by Kandis Clesson that helped lead the Wildcats to the win. Not only did she dominate on the mound, the sophomore pitcher singled with one out in the top of the seventh to score junior shortstop Amy Trenkamp for the game’s lone run.

Clesson allowed two hits and struck out seven, and received help once again from a strong infield defense. Aside from the two hits, only one other ball left the infield.

“The experience showed today. The experience of being here, we weren’t intimidated by anything. The girls just kept playing the game and played tough,” said Mount Si coach Larry White.

It had been a tight contest until the seventh, as Clesson and Anacortes senior pitcher Randy Harvey battled out-for-out through the first six innings. The Wildcats broke the logjam first in the second, when junior second baseman Kayla Jayne singled for the game’s first hit. Jayne then was caught in a run down for the inning’s final out.

Clesson did not allow a hit until the fifth, when Anacortes singled with two outs.

Freshman outfielder Lacey Blais experienced her first ever state tournament and, along with the large crowd of Mount Si supporters, witnessed this team do something last year’s state squad didn’t do: win its first-round game.

Last year’s team lost its first game. It can be argued, considering the slow start this year’s team had, and the lack of seniors, that this year’s Wildcats’ team is weaker than last year’s squad. Blais disagreed with that assessment.

“I don’t think we’re weaker. I think we’re just a new team and we have a lot to accomplish, but we’ve accomplished what we’ve wanted to accomplish, so I think we’re doing really good right now,” Blais said.

In Friday’s second game, in one of the bigger upsets in the tournament, Mount Si took nine innings to pull off a shocker. The Wildcats beat WF West of Chehalis 1-0 on a Jayne single scored a runner from third. Coming into the game, the Bearcats, from the Pac-9 league, hadn’t lost a game in approximately 18 decisions.

Clesson shut out WF West on three hits, and sophomore outfielder Sam Baldwin and junior infielder Ashley Svarthumle went 2-for-4 to lead the Wildcats offensively. Mount Si’s upset of the Bearcats was not the only upset; fellow tournament favorites Shorecrest, North Mason and Hanford all lost their quarterfinal games, and in the Highlanders’ and Falcons’ cases, both were then quickly eliminated in their loser-out contests Friday night following their quarterfinal defeats.

Saturday began with a rematch of last year’s loser-out game with Mount Rainier, a game that the Wildcats won 4-3 in extra innings. Once again the game went into extra innings, but it was nowhere near as easy this time around.

Mount Si rallied from a 2-0 deficit to tie the game in the bottom of the fourth on a Jayne single, then took the lead in the bottom of the fifth 3-2.

The Wildcats showed no quit, and in the bottom of the ninth, things happened. With junior catcher Erika Evans on second to open the frame by rule, Baldwin bunted to get Evans to third, except the Rams threw the ball into Baldwin’s back and it got away, allowing Evans to slide into home safely with the game-winning run and send Mount Si to their first state title game in school history.

“[The] girls kept playing hard, man. We started off 2-0, girls are believing, man. We believe it. We can beat anybody, and now we’re making things happen when we need to. We talked about it before the game, we get into that tiebreaker thing, we love our chances, here we are,” said White.