Walk leads the way with nine points in the win on Wednesday.
After the undefeated season of the Bainbridge girls’ lacrosse team was ended by arch rival Lakeside Monday night, the Spartans responded the only way they could – with a 22-10 blowout of Forest Ridge Wednesday night.
Mariah Walk led the way with nine points on five goals and four assists. She also had seven ground balls, four caused turnovers and three draw controls.
Lucy Schlesser had three goals and three assists while Natalie Evans scored five goals.
Sarah Shea and Sydney Whitaker each had hat tricks.
Sally Baumgartner had four assists and eight draw controls.
Head coach Tami Tommila said they came into the game a little flat after their loss to Lakeside Monday night and found themselves down early in the game, but were able to climb back and hold the Ravens off.
“The girls did a fantastic job of playing smart lacrosse the rest of the game,” she said.
Tommila also gave credit to Forest Ridge for playing as well as they did without their star player in Jillian Chong who was out with an injury.
On the other side, the Bainbridge boys’ lacrosse team kept their in-state undefeated streak going with a 17-2 thrashing of Puyallup Tuesday night.
Jordan Wagner had four goals while Jordan Foster had three goals and an assist.
Sam Snow had a hat trick while Kevin Nguyen had two goals and two assists.
Dayton Gilbreath had 11 ground balls.
The girls lacrosse team travels to Seattle next Monday to play Roosevelt, then host Tacoma at 6:15 p.m. next Wednesday in the final game of the regular season.
The boys lacrosse team traveled to Bellevue Friday night.
They host Roosevelt next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the final game of the regular season.
WIAA makes some changes
Among the amendments that were to be voted on at the WIAA annual Representative Assembly, one was to make girls lacrosse a certified sport.
It would have been the first certification since girls bowling was approved in 2001, but only seven of the 53 reps voted for it.
Girls lacrosse coach Tami Tommila was disappointed in the decision.
“Our high school girls lacrosse league has worked hard to get girls lacrosse on the table with WIAA,” she said. “But they gave a great presentation to the WIAA – Sue Haveland from Overlake worked really hard on it.”
Tommila also had strong words for the association over their choice.
“I would say it’s an embarrassment to the WIAA to not honor lacrosse,” she said. “They’re so far behind (places) like California and Colorado and I think they’re doing a disservice to young kids who want to play lacrosse and get to a higher level.”
Though the amendment failed, several other amendments and changes were approved at the assembly that will go into effect August 2.
The biggest one was the approval of an amendment that will make students who are transferring between schools in different districts or intra-district transfers meet WIAA guidelines instead of school district guidelines.
The amendment was passed to help quell the rise of student-athletes who attended different schools simply to play for a better team.
Under the new amendment, students must prove they now live in the attendance area of that school or have a change in guardianship.
Otherwise, they must qualify for a “hardship” factor or be forced to sit out a year and can only play at the junior varsity level.
Another amendment that passed will make it so students ineligible at one school cannot transfer to another school to be eligible there until they complete the conditions of eligibility.
Yet another amendment that passed allows schools to appeal an “inadvertent error” that led to an ineligible player participating in a sport.
This has been referred to as the “Archbishop Murphy rule,” which may prevent situations such as what happened to the Archbishop Murphy football team last season.
They had to forfeit games due to head coach Terry Enis – then dying of cancer – not noticing a player’s lapsed physical, forcing the team to forfeit the games the ineligible player played in and missed the playoffs.
Other changes that occurred included moving Star Track and the 3A boys and girls basketball tournaments back to Tacoma.
The basketball tournaments will be held in the Tacoma Dome while the state track meet will be expanded to three days and include the 2A classification.
It will be held at Mount Tahoma High School.
Fastpitchers win division
It was a week of good news and bad news for the Bainbridge fastpitch team.
They took home their first ever Metro League Mountain Division title with a 15-0 win over Ingraham Tuesday, but lost its last regular season game to Holy Names 5-3 on Wednesday, ending its chance of a undefeated regular season.
“It’s a plus for these kids and a plus for this program,” head coach Liz McCloskey said of the team’s first title in her four-year coaching career at Bainbridge. “Three months ago, if someone had told me we would be 19-1 at the end of the regular season I would have said ‘maybe.’
“But being division champs is great,” she continued. “I’d rather be 20-0 and division champs but I think losing (on Thursday) puts us back down to reality and makes us realize the things we need to fix offensively and defensively.”
Against the Cougars, Bainbridge took a 2-0 lead in the first on a double by Brittany Wisner, but Holy Names scored four times in the next two innings to take the lead.
The Spartans had its chances, including a bases loaded situation in the sixth, but Emily Nordhoff made a diving catch to rob Haylee Baker of a base hit.
McCloskey admitted the team wasn’t as focused as it has been in previous games, but also said they put the bat on the ball – they just couldn’t get a hit.
“We just hit it at people,” she said.
Chelsie Kakela hit a solo home run.
Against Ingraham, the Spartans ended the game early by scoring 12 runs in the second.
Baker hit a homerun and drove in four runs while Kakela hit a homer and drove in three runs.
Karen Robinson pitched two innings for the win in her last home game.
“She will be missed, but hopefully we can do something special for her and let her leave on a high note,” McCloskey said.
Robinson, who is headed to Carleton College, a Division III school in Northfield, Minn., to play softball, said she’s “excited” to graduate and move on, but said the team has more to accomplish.
“Districts will really tell us how well we’ll do,” she said. “Our district has some really good teams in it, so when we play them, we know how we’ll stand.”
Robinson said she’s hopeful the team can get that far and do better in state than last year, when a bad call against Sammamish did them in.
“I really feel like we can do well at state,” she said.
They’ve done well so far, scoring 239 runs and allowing just 18.
Seven players are hitting .390 or better, with Baker leading the way with a .641 batting average.
Kakela leads the team in home runs with six and RBIs with 40.
Baker and Lindsay Willmann have struck out a combined 73 batters during the season.
Baker has a .76 earned-run average.
Bainbridge plays the winner of the Chief Sealth/Seattle Prep game at home next Wednesday at 4 p.m.
The winner moves on to play Bishop Blanchet Thursday at 3 p.m. with the winner to advance to the league championship game at 5:30 p.m. Friday.
Kickers get division title
It may not have gone the way that George Vukic would have liked, but what matters is the Bainbridge boys’ soccer team is Metro League Mountain Division champs.
The Spartans could have clinched this week, but tied O’Dea by a score of 2-2 Tuesday, then lost to Eastside Catholic 1-0 Thursday, its first of the season.
But they came away with the top seed out of the division thanks to some help from Lakeside, who lost 2-0 to Bishop Blanchet on Thursday.
“In my view, we put forth some wonderful effort,” Vukic, the head coach said. “We played some very motivated teams.
“All the teams have capable rosters, so going into Metros we’re going to have to make some adjustments.”
Against O’Dea, Kenji Queva scored off an assist from Max Aussendorf in the 41st minute while Kyle Scoble scored off an assist from Sam McAllister in the 54th minute.
Despite backing into the title, Vukic is still happy to be the division champs.
“The kids’ attitude is great,” he said. “It’s a bit of a test, but some of the older players felt the loss was a blessing in disguise and I agree.”
Bainbridge now gets a bye into the semifinals of the Metro playoffs and will play the winner of the Chief Sealth/Lakeside game Wednesday at Interbay Stadium.
The finals are Friday night at 7 p.m.
