ANACORTES — The Pirates got a big performance from Spencer Burdick and a big hit by Marcus Hampton to beat Napavine, 6-1, here on Saturday in a 2B regional baseball final.
The win puts Adna back in the State 2B tournament for the third year in a row and secures the team at least a fourth-place state finish.
“We made no mistakes, all day long. We just made simple plays,” Adna coach Jon Rooklidge said. “I guess you could say we played our best baseball of the season when it counted.”
Burdick worked all seven innings — after throwing 2 ⅓ innings during Saturday’s opening win over La Conner — and struck out eight while holding Napavine to three hits.
“We knew we had to play perfect, and then we knew we’d have to do something special in addition to that,” Rooklidge said. “Napavine’s a great team, and we did all the things we haven’t done in the last few weeks. We put the ball in play, reduced our strikeouts, reduced our fly balls, and we did not leave runners stranded.”
Hampton hit a 2-run homer in the third inning that put the Pirates up 3-0, and added a double. Burdick added a double, and Adna made the most of its four hits in the win.
“We capitalized on a couple walks, hit batters, a couple errors, and we had timely hitting,” Rooklidge said. “That’s what you have to do against a team like that.”
Napavine had swept Adna, 5-1 and 7-3, in a Central 2B League twinbill back on March 20, and beat the Pirates 7-2 in the District 4 semifinals.
Adna tacked on 3 insurance runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to lead 6-0 before Napavine scored its lone run in the seventh inning.
The Pirates (20-7) will now face three-time defending state champion DeSales at 4 p.m. on Friday, at Centralia’s Ed Wheeler Field, in the state semifinals.
Notes: Adna lost to DeSales, 13-0, in last year’s state semifinals, and lost to the Irish, 5-0, in the 2013 state championship game. … It was the final game for Napavine seniors Tanner Dekoker, Tucker Dekoker, Cole Doughty, Jensen Lindsay, Brady Woodrum, Kaleb Sisson, Chance Sherwood, Julian Rodriguez and Tyler McCarty. The Tigers finished the season with a 19-5 record, after beating Liberty Bell 8-1 in Saturday’s regional opener.
Adna 7, La Conner 5
ANACORTES — The Pirates took an unconventional approach to pitching in their regional opener, with three different hurlers and four pitching changes in a 7-5 win over La Conner.
At the plate, however, Adna managed 11 hits off of Northwest 1B/2B League MVP Max Miller to advance to the regional finals.
David Young went 3 for 4 and drove in 3 runs, Spencer Burdick had a pair of doubles and knocked in 2 runs, and Tyson Gray and Connor Weed were each 2 for 4 for Adna.
The Pirate defense committed just one error behind its pitchers. Wes Wilson started and worked into the second inning, with Burdick taking over to fan one batter and close out the second.
Wilson came back out and pitched the third and fourth innings. Bryce McCloskey tossed the fifth, and Burdick returned to close out the game in the final two frames.
