Bearcats Clinch Season Series With Home Victory Against T-Birds

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Despite heading into the seventh with its largest lead over rival Tumwater in over two years, W.F. West softball coach Kevin Zylstra was far from comfortable in yet another rendition of the back-and-forth rivalry Friday night at Rec Park in Chehalis. 

The Bearcats, thanks to some timely hits in the fifth and sixth innings, built up a 8-2 lead, but didn’t properly let out a sigh of relief until recording the final out in the top of the seventh. 

Entering Friday night, the Thunderbirds and Bearcats were 3-3 against one another the last two seasons, with a run differential right at zero. But Friday night, in a game that didn’t count toward the league standings but clinched W.F. West the season series victory over its rivals, the Bearcats separated toward the back-half of the game in an 8-2 win. 

Deadlocked at 1-1 for most of the first few innings, Izzy Vigre broke the tie with a clutch two-out single in the fourth, scoring Tyran Ozretich — running for first baseman Savannah Hawkins — from second. 

That wouldn’t be the last timely hit for the bottom of W.F. West’s order, either. In the fifth, Saige Brindle hit a double that was just short of the center field fence to make it 4-1, and Chase White singled two at-bats later to bring two more home and make it 6-1. 

“If you would’ve told me we would’ve put up eight against Ella Ferguson I wouldn’t have believed you,” Zylstra said. “I’m so proud of our girls right now.”

Tumwater’s ace Ferguson went all six innings, allowing 12 Bearcat hits, and giving up eight runs, with five earned, adding seven strikeouts. 

W.F. West’s Ella Young countered with another complete game allowing two runs, with one earned, on eight hits and five walks with three strikeouts. 

“Ferguson is such a good pitcher,” Zylstra said. “She works the zone real well and she looks for weaknesses in batters. If you bite at a riseball, you’re going to get a steady diet of them. Our girls did a great job of not biting at bad pitches and making her wonder what we were going to go for. She had to stay around the plate, and we took advantage.”

Brindle, White, and Vigre had the clutch hits, and Hawkins added two more RBIs in the sixth for insurance, going 2 for 4 with a run scored as well. At leadoff, Lena Fragner went 2 for 4 with a run scored, Brielle Etter had a pair of hits, and Rachel Gray added a double. 

Tumwater was led at the plate by Megan Paull’s 1 for 3 line with a run scored and a double, Zoe Fields went 3 for 4, and Megan Barrett went 2 for 4 with a run scored and an RBI. 

“You don’t want to lose this one,” Zylstra said of the non-league contest. “We didn’t want to go up there on Monday and have that be the deciding game. It's great to get two in a row against them, we have one more coming up and we’ll be going for three.”

The Bearcats and Thunderbirds will play for the final time in the regular season against one another this Monday up in Tumwater at 4:30 p.m.