There’s one factor amongst the five teams in the Evergreen Conference that will battle night in and night out for the four spots in the Class 2A District 4 tournament.
They all bring at bare minimum their ace back to the fold. Two of them are signed to pitch at the Division I level. Four of them have started a state tournament game.
Spring usually is the time for showers and thunderstorms. In the largest league in Lewis and South Thurston County, it may call for strikeouts and shutouts.
Tumwater’s Ella Ferguson and Aberdeen’s Lilly Camp headline the crop of aces in the league while W.F. West’s tandem of Taylor Tobin plus Monroe Dalrymple and Centralia’s Hollynn Wakefield make for a difficult day for most hitters. And new to this spring, all three league matchups will count as league games.
Ferguson, off to Sacramento State, pushed the Thunderbirds into the state championship game behind two no-hitters and 33 strikeouts in a runner-up finish. They have a new coach in Shaunie Kennedy and the cupboard is far from bare.
Ferguson’s battery mate Jaime Haase returns as one of their top hitters as do returning starters Megan Barnett, Marissa La Praim and Zoe Fields. Sarah Stevens, the No. 2 pitcher for Tumwater, picked up 10 strikeouts in its first win of the season.
W.F. West fell two games shy of placing at state last spring, falling to Aberdeen in a consolation matchup. Coach Kevin Zylstra’s bunch loses some leadership, but brings back first team all-league infielder Avalon Myers and Tobin, a second team all-league arm.
Addie Froschauer, who hit over at the top of the lineup, also returns. The Bearcats are attempting to defend their District 4 title after beating the Bobcats 2-1.
Centralia lost a winner-to-districts tiebreaker against Rochester despite nearly erasing a 7-0 deficit at home. Wakefield anchors the rotation for the third straight season while Payton Baumel, a first team all-league outfielder, is expected to hit in the heart of the Tigers’ order.
Coach David Orr will see a new infield where three starters graduated and only Baumel and Brooklyn Sprague hit over .340.
Black Hills is the lone local 2A team that hasn’t suffered a loss in the early portion of the season. Returning all-league infielder Kailey Miller leads a group that won just six times last spring, but only had a couple of seniors.
Starter Ella Goheen is back in the circle and freshman Maddie Knight delivered a walk-off hit in the season-opening win over River Ridge. The Wolves struggled to keep most EvCo games competitive and didn’t beat any of the three state qualifiers in nine total games.
