2A Softball: Bearcats Bounce Back, Finish in Third

SELAH — The Bearcats went down, but didn’t bow out.

After a disheartening loss to Fife in the State 2A Softball Tournament semifinals on Saturday morning, W.F. West dusted itself off and won twice to bring the state’s third-place trophy back to Chehalis.

The Bearcats topped Tumwater, 6-4, in a loser-out game, then knocked off Selah, 12-7, in the trophy round.

The win meant this year’s senior class — Kassidy Grandorff, Roni Braun, Tessa Wollan and Jessica McKay — wrap their careers with two fifth-place finishes, the 2015 state title and a third-place piece of hardware.

“It was definitely rough for five minutes or so. We definitely cried a bit — that feeling really sucks, especially three times,” Grandorff said. “But then you just throw it away. This group is really something special, and we weren’t going to take another fifth-place trophy home.”

The Bearcats didn’t let a crushing semifinal loss define their season.

“We’ve had teams in the past that have done the whole, you know, ‘sad and didn’t recover,’” Bearcat coach Mike Keen said, referencing the teams’ 2013 and 2014 semifinal losses — the freshman and sophomore seasons of this year’s senior class. “We had a good enough blend of seniors that want it, and young kids that all they want to do is play, that I didn’t think that was going to be an issue.”

The Bearcats went into the postseason undefeated, after winning the Evergreen 2A Conference title in runaway fashion and their fifth-straight District 4 title. They were making their 13th straight appearance in the State 2A tournament, and finished the season with a 27-1 record.

“We’re all sad about third place, but you can’t really go down on that with just one game, because we accomplished so much this year,” Grandorff said. “We did some things people didn’t think we were going to do this year.”

Third/Fourth: W.F. West 12, Selah 7

The Bearcats didn’t waste much time jumping on Selah in the tournament’s third-place game, plating five runs in the second inning and rolling in a 12-7 victory.

The seniors took the offensive center stage, with Kassidy Grandorff going 2 for 4 with a pair of doubles and three RBIs and Roni Braun launching a monster homer to center field in the sixth inning and going 2 for 2.

Lexie Strasser pitched three shutout innings to start things off, and Tessa Wollan knocked in the game’s first two runs with a bases-loaded single in the second.

The Bearcats added three more runs in that second frame on two bases-loaded walks and a wild pitch.

W.F. West scored five more in the fourth, all with two outs, with RBI singles from Kindra Davis, Kim Frazier and Ashlee Vadala and Grandorff’s two-run double.

Selah scored six runs in the fourth inning after Strasser’s exit, using three hits and four walks to bring a bit of intrigue to the last game of the tournament. Ashlee Vadala came on with one out, however, and closed out the win, allowing just one additional run in the fifth inning on a double from Emma Laurvick and a Bearcat error.

Vadala, who finished 2 for 3, followed up Braun’s sixth-inning solo shot with a double, and scored on the next batter when Grandorff hit her second double.

Consolation Semifinals: W.F. West 6, Tumwater 4

Tumwater scored all of its runs in the second inning, but W.F. West answered to stay alive in the State 2A Softball Tournament with a 6-4 win.

It was the Bearcats’ fourth win of the season against Tumwater, the runner-up in the Evergreen 2A Conference and third-place team out of District 4.

The Thunderbirds used three hits, two hit batters, a walk and an error to push across four runs in the second frame, and ace Jocelyn Glasgo struck out 10 in her six innings of work to keep the Bearcats off balance.

Roni Braun’s RBI single in the fourth inning scored Kindra Davis, who had reached on a double — the first W.F. West hit of the game. Two Tumwater errors, both with two outs, kept the inning alive and put another run on the board.

Singles from Tessa Wollan and O.J. Dean loaded the bases in the fifth, and Davis drew a walk to push one run across. Braun then hit a hard ground ball to second base with two outs that was misplayed, helping two more runs cross and putting W.F. West in the lead.

Another run — unearned, courtesy of a misplayed stolen base — scored on a wild pitch in the seventh.

Glasgo gave up five hits and walked three for Tumwater, which was eliminated with the loss. Ashlee Vadala worked the first six innings for W.F. West, striking out two and giving up four hits, and Lexie Strasser tossed a shutout seventh for the save.

Semifinals: Selah 5, W.F. West 2

The offensive tendencies were all or nothing in the State 2A semifinals, as all of the game’s seven runs scored on homers and Fife ace Anna Kasner fanned a whopping 18 batters in a 5-2 win.

Kindra Davis hit a solo homer in the fourth inning and Kassidy Grandorff hit a solo homer — her first of the year — in the fifth inning for W.F. West. Kasner didn’t allow any other hits, and between a walk-free effort and her team’s clean defense faced just 23 batters and never delivered a pitch with a runner on base.

From the second inning on, Kasner recorded all but one of the game’s outs herself.

Fife’s Kaitlynn Gain hit a solo homer in the fourth, and Margaret Crist hit a grand slam in the sixth inning that sealed the win for the Trojans and handed W.F. West what turned out to be its only loss of the 2016 season.