Don’t actually take the headline seriously. Betting on high school sports, if it was actually legal and available on your favorite app such as DraftKings or FanDuel, makes you a degenerate.
That said, when you see your state softball brackets start to trickle in once the calendar flips to late-May, it would be wise to take a gander.
Avoid the higher seed sometimes. Waste little time looking at matchups. Heck, don’t even bother picking a team from Districts 1, 2, 3, 5 or 6.
When the weather warms up and the stakes are raised, just pick the teams out of District 4.
You’ll look smarter.
It isn’t an overstatement that Southwest Washington was the star in Yakima, Selah and Richland last weekend where in the semifinals of the state softball tournament, nine of the 12 total slots in Classes 2A, 1A and 2B hailed from D4.
And the cherry on top?
All three state champs were from D4 in Adna, Montesano and Aberdeen. The three programs rode either an electric offense, a dominant pitcher or just an all-around really good team to claim the top trophy.
There’s a reason why most coaches view the district tournament as tough or even tougher than state.
“Our district, to me, I say it every year, District 4 (tournament) is right at the same caliber as our state tournament,” Toledo head coach Jeff Davis said.
What it really comes down to is how similarly built these teams were.
In 2B, it lacked a dominant pitcher for the most part. Probably the most feared starter in the circle was Co-C2BL MVP Peyton Holter of Toledo. Adna, Pe Ell/Willapa Valley, Napavine and even Rainier plus Raymond/South Bend were fairly young, pitching wise.
The offense? That was shared.
All of those teams had little trouble scoring runs. Listing all of the really good hitters would make this column far too long, but if you wanna hop on GameChanger, you’ll see what I mean.
So it came as little surprise that the bats would translate to Gateway Sports Complex for the four teams that made state in 2B.
PWV averaged 18 runs per game in five tournament contests. Adna eclipsed double digits in all four matchups en route to a state title. Toledo got the bats going late to have three comeback wins. Napavine, even with going 1-2, still put up 37 total runs.
Over in 2A, it was dominant pitching with Division I recruits Lilly Camp (Aberdeen), Ella Ferguson (Tumwater) and Mackenzie Henthorn (Mark Morris).
The Bobcats won their first ever state title because of Camp’s arm. Bound for Grand Canyon, the right-hander finished state with an eye-popping 53 strikeouts in four wins. If there was any doubt of who the best pitcher in the classification was, she ended any discussion.
Ferguson, headed to Sacramento State, pushed the T-Birds to the district title and outdueled Henthorn at Recreation Park. She ran out of gas at state and was saddled with two losses, but ended her prep career with three state medals, including a championship her freshman year.
The Monarchs’ southpaw, committed to Montana, beat Camp in the district semis and had over 10 punchouts in every postseason game except one.
Montesano, Rochester and Elma all had a little bit of everything. The trio had one or two top tier options in the circle and a lineup one-through-nine that was lethal.
It’s how Montesano won districts and state. It’s how Rochester behind Layna Demers and a plethora of experience in the lineup reached its first ever state championship game. It’s how Elma came on late and put together quite the postseason run to go from losing in the first round of districts to placing fourth in all of 1A.
Maybe if this was a one-year wonder, this column wouldn’t even be written. It isn’t.
Since 2B has been a classification for softball since 2002, and this per the WIAA media guide from state softball, District 4 has won 20 titles. In 1A, the district has claimed 16 championships since 2000. And in 2A, the number is 14 since 1998. Go back even farther, from 1992-2010, schools in SW Washington in 3A and 4A won 15 titles.
The beauty of high school sports is there’s an eventual evening out period.
Maybe District 4 won’t have nine total top-four teams in 2026. Maybe another district gets better and steps to the plate. Maybe an unlucky bounce happens in an elimination game.
Or, maybe, this is the one sport where Southwest Washington rises to the top year in and year out.
I’d bet on it.
