Lacrossers take out Lakeside
Tarie Cauoette is having the best week ever.
Not only was she asked out to the senior prom by her best friend Alex Carter – who used the swaying power of flowers and the sign he and his friends held up on top of the baseball dugout before the game that simply said “PROM?” – she and her teammates defeated their nemesis in Lakeside in a 12-10 thriller Wednesday night.
Natalie Evans and Sally Baumgartner combined to score seven goals.
The loss ends the Lions’ winning streak in league play and keeps their streak of nine straight intact.
“It’s so big,” Cauoette said of the victory. “It’s a huge confidence boost.”
Head coach Tami Tommila was glad the team came through when it was needed.
“I think its satisfying to know that we can put behind the first loss (to Lakeside) and realize that we’re not the same team we were in March,” she said. “We’re a young team, but you can see our progression and we stuck together really well.”
The two teams kept it even at the start, as Lakeside’s Lauren McAndrews scored first, but Baumgartner and Evans scored the next two goals for Bainbridge.
The Lions took a 4-2 lead, but after a Spartan timeout, Evans and Baumgartner scored to tie it back up.
Lakeside came back with two more goals while a Bainbridge goal was disallowed due to a crease violation, but Evans scored with an assist from Baumgartner, then Marley Horne scored on an assist from Mariah Walk to tie the game up again.
“I find that if we can settle down, have a timeout and talk about things, every time (after that) we come out on fire,” Tommila said. “That’s what you have to do with a (young) group like this is settle them down and they’ll come out and work really hard for you.”
Brett Eisenhart put one in for Lakeside three minutes into the second half, but Horne, Lucy Schlesser and Evans scored three big goals to put the Spartans up with 13:59 left.
Ellie Crutcher put one in to end their run, but two minutes later Cauoette picked up a ground ball in enemy territory and took it the rest of the way for the score.
The tit-for-tat scoring kept on going as Sylvia Warren and Whitaker traded goals, then Baumgartner and McAndrews did the same, with McAndrews scoring with 6:15 left.
That was the last goal of the game as both defenses did their job in denying any more scores.
Goalie Josefine Wallace also made several big saves, even making some big stops on free position shots by the Lions after Bainbridge penalties were called.
“What we did choose to do is shut down their top players,” Tommila said of their plan to deny their top goal scorers from getting any good looks at the cage. “We made the rest of their team try to beat us.”
Tommila and Cauoette also praised Wallace for her play late in the game.
“She really did the job for us,” Tommila said. “She’s got great skills. She’s a good athlete, she has a really good stick and she’s got confidence.”
“Jo has improved so much from the beginning of the year,” Cauoette said. “She came out with a mission” to shut down Lakeside.
Lakeside also had two goals late in the game, but one was disallowed on a crease violation, while the other was scored by McAndrews with just seconds left, but it was taken away after the ref discovered that McAndrews had scored her goal with an illegal stick.
“It’s always nice to end with the ball in your hand,” Tommila said.
Bainbridge (10-1) plays at Bellevue Friday before hosting North Kitsap next Wednesday for their last home game of the regular season.
Fastpitchers get a big win
The fastpitch game between Bainbridge and Sound Division leader West Seattle had been postponed twice earlier in the season for rain and a lack of umpires.
But when they finally got together to play, it was well worth the wait.
Rightfielder Chelsea Baker drove in Meika Monroe for the game winning run with a base hit in the bottom of the seventh as the Bainbridge fastpitch team came back to defeat West Seattle 3-2 Tuesday.
The win snaps the Wildcats’ 14-game league winning streak.
“I was aiming for right(field) and I hit it (into) center(field),” she said of her strategy. “I knew I was going to get it (in) somewhere.”
Lindsay Willmann pitched all seven innings for her fifth win of the year. She gave up one earned run on five hits, walking just one and striking out 10.
“They knew coming into this game they had to play their absolute best game all season and they did just that,” head coach Liz McCloskey said. “That was the only way we were going to beat this team.”
But Bainbridge almost beat themselves when West Seattle took advantage of their mistakes to score their only runs of the game in the second inning. Shortstop Rori Margera singled, then Millie Osborne singled to score Margera when Bainbridge made several overthrows to try and get both runners.
Osborne later scored on a groundout, but Chelsea said they weren’t worried.
“I still felt the confidence within us,” she said. “We were up in spirits.”
The Spartans got the run back in their half of the second when third baseman Haylee Baker, Chelsea’s younger sister, ripped the first pitch down the left field line for a double.
Willmann then hit one back up the middle to score Haylee.
Bainbridge got a break in the fifth when the West Seattle centerfielder misplayed Kaitlin Gaspitch’s single, allowing her to reach second.
Haylee made them pay by putting one into left field for a ground rule double to tie the game.
Meanwhile, Willmann settled down, giving up just three more hits and a walk.
She also got big defensive plays from batterymate Brittany Wisner – who caught a pop up as the ball was just about to scrape the backstop in the fifth inning – to second baseman Chelsie Kakela, who went deep in the hole to rob a Wildcat batter of a base hit in the seventh inning.
Wisner said it’s one of Willmann’s best performances of the season.
“Even during warmups she was looking great,” she said. “She just came out there, she had a plan and she executed it. I was very, very impressed.”
In the seventh, first baseman Karen Robinson singled back up the middle.
After Monroe was inserted as a pinch runner, Gaspitch lined one into left field for a double to put runners on second and third.
On a 1-1 pitch, Chelsea Baker sent one back up the middle for the game winning base hit, scoring Monroe to the ecstatic yells of her teammates.
“My 7-8-9 hitters came through in the clutch,” McCloskey said. “They’ve been hitting the ball well (lately).”
On Monday Bainbridge defeated Seattle Prep 16-7 in a sloppy game (both teams combined for 13 errors) then beat the Panthers on Wednesday 12-2 in five innings.
Robinson got the win on Monday while Haylee went all five innings for her fifth win of the season.
Now with the Metro League playoffs in sight next week, the team is riding on a wave of confidence.
“We came in strong and we finished strong,” Chelsea said of the win. “It’s a big boost because we knew we could beat those other two teams” – referring to their three losses to Bishop Blanchet and Holy Names – “and now we just proved it.”
The Spartans (13-3, 14-4) play next Wednesday at Lower Woodland in Seattle.
Tennis sends 18 to Metros
The draw is out and the Bainbridge tennis team is sending 18 players to the Metro League tournament today.
Head coach Mike Anderson estimates it’s the most he’s ever had in his tenure as coach.
For the boys, Spencer Cheng earned the three seed and Nash Reijnen scored a seven seed in singles play.
Darton Gibbons made it in singles play as well.
In boys’ doubles, Taylor Lea and Erik Saska get the eighth seed while Ian Saska and Dylan Skeffington along with Euiman Jung and Travis Chickamura made it in as well.
For the girls, Molly Donohue earned a three seed while Anna Judson made it as a eighth seed. Becky Gottlieb qualified for singles play as well.
In doubles, Brooke Shorett and Jamie Slonaker made it as the three seed while Ali Loechl and Taylor Raquer along with April Isa and Hayley Trageser qualified for tournament play as well.
The tournament starts today at Lower Woodland Park in Seattle at 9:30 a.m.
It continues through Monday and Tuesday as long as players stay alive to earn a birth to districts in the coming weeks.
