Onalaska picked up its first baseball district win in four years on Thursday, taking down North Beach on the road 6-2 in the 2B District 4 pigtail game.
“This year hasn’t really gone the way we wanted it,” Onalaska coach Weylin Womack said. “They just kept battling, we just kept preaching to get in, and here we are.”
Through four innings, the Loggers didn’t have many answers at the plate, and a pair of unearned North Beach runs gave the Hyaks a 2-0 lead heading into the fifth.
Layton McKinley worked a two-strike walk to lead off the fifth, and Broxton Mounce reached on an error to put runners on the corner with no one out.
Two batters later, Rowdy Lyons got the breakthrough, hitting a two-run triple to tie the game. Broden Vickers followed with an RBI single to give Onalaska the lead, and he later came around to score on a wild pitch to make it 4-2.
“We did pretty well getting (North Beach’s pitcher) deep into counts,” Womack said. “That inning, we went up with a mindset that we were gonna hit the ball. Our baserunners were aggressive, and it was pretty good all around.”
In the top of the seventh, Vickers hit another RBI single for one insurance run, and Dakota Kramer brought home another with an RBI groundout.
On the mound, Maddox McKinley had already thrown 97 pitches in the first six innings, giving him less than 10 to work with in the seventh if he wanted to finish the game.
“He came off the field and said ‘I can go the distance,” Womack said.
In exactly eight pitches, McKinley retired the side in order, finishing a complete game and sending Onalaska through to the first round of the district tournament.
McKinley allowed just five hits and two unearned runs, and he struck out 12 while issuing just two free passes.
“He just came out and he threw strikes,” Womack said. “I said I don't care how you do it, just throw strikes. And he just blew it by them.”
The Loggers (3-18) will head back to the coast for their next playoff game on Saturday, when they’ll take on No. 4 Toledo in a first-round matchup at 11 a.m. in Ilwaco. The winner will face the top-seeded Fishermen in a quarterfinal at 2 p.m., while the loser will be eliminated.
The Riverhawks and Loggers faced off at the beginning of the season, with Toledo taking the two games by double-digits.
“We’re excited to be where we’re at,” Womack said. “It’ll be fun to see how much better we’ve got. No one is expecting us to be here, so we’re kind of a dark horse going in. We’ve got nothing to lose, so we’re just gonna go in loose and play some baseball.”
