2A Baseball: Bearcats' Season Ends Just Shy of Regionals

Posted

W.F. West upset Woodland to reach the third-place game, but Black Hills came through in the bottom of the seventh inning to put an end to the Bearcats’ playoff run on Saturday in District 4 2A Baseball Tournament action at Centralia’s Ed Wheeler Field.

The Bearcats beat Greater St. Helens 2A League champion Woodland, 6-5, in eight innings in their loser-out opener. Michael Rose reached base on an error in the bottom of the eighth, moved to third on a single from Elijah Johnson, and scored on a two-out ground ball by Dakota Hawkins that was overthrown to first base for the walk-off run.

Johnson, Hawkins and Hayden Dobyns each had two hits for W.F. West, with Hawkins driving in a run with a first-inning double and Dobyns adding an RBI single in the first.

That put the Chehalis squad in the tournament’s third-place, winner-to-regionals game against Black Hills. Johnson started on the mound and worked into the seventh inning before Hawkins took over.

The Bearcats trailed 2-0 going into the seventh, but rallied for 6 runs — only to see Black Hills come back with 5 runs, and win on a walk-off single from Tyler Warren.



Dobyns and Johnson each had two hits against the Wolves, with Hawkins adding an RBI double in the seventh inning. Rose and Johnson each added 2-run singles in the seventh.

W.F. West finished the season with a 12-12 record, after going 3-6 in Evergreen 2A Conference play. The Bearcats graduate seniors Rose, Brandon Davis, J.C. Cleary, J.T. Yarter, Daniel Blomdahl, Ryan Steepy and Jeffrey Tereski.

“I thought we definitely got better as the season went on. We did exactly what we set out to do,” W.F. West coach Bryan Bullock said, of his first year in Chehalis. “We gave ourselves a chance to get into the state tournament, and we played our best baseball when we got into the postseason.”

Black Hills (12-10) advances to the regional playoffs for the first time in program history, and will face Anacortes on Saturday at 1 p.m. in Bellingham.