ONALASKA — For Brian Demarest’s Napavine Tigers, the two-game set with the Onalaska Loggers could not have come at a better time.
Napavine entered Wednesday’s final home game of the season coming off a three-game skid, including an 11-0 shutout at Adna on Monday. But after taking care of Onalaska 11-1 on Wednesday, the Tigers scored multiple runs in every inning and crushed a pair of home runs to topple the Loggers 16-3 in five innings Friday to close the regular season for both teams.
The Tigers struck first with a pair of runs in the first inning against Loggers starter DeSean Stewart thanks to a sacrifice fly by Hudson Chambers and a bases-loaded walk. But the Loggers, entering Friday’s game on a seven-game losing streak, lit up Napavine ace Cal Bullock in the bottom of the first.
Onalaska’s first two hitters reached safely without registering a hit, and Stewart delivered a fly deep enough to score Blaze Underhill from third. Cooper Lawrence didn’t need a warmup pitch to figure out Bullock, roping a game-tying triple to left. Four pitches later, Rowdy Lyons took a risk on a 3-0 pitch and found green grass on a single that gave Onalaska a 3-2 lead.
The Loggers’ lead and momentum were snatched away quickly, however. Beckett Landram and Bullock hit back-to-back doubles in the second, the latter scoring the former. Stewart walked Chambers with the bases juiced to score the go-ahead run, and Tommy Deebach picked up an RBI from a double, the third of the inning off Stewart.
“I like winning better than losing any day of the week, but this game was good in particular because they gave us some adversity in the first inning,” Demarest said. “We come out and score a couple and then they barrel balls off Cal [Bullock], which he isn’t really used to, and they get a lead on us. Our kids had to respond, and they responded really well.”
From that point, it was all Tigers. Landram cranked a no-doubt home run to right field in the third inning for his third jack of the year, and Layton Griffith extended the lead with an RBI single. In the fourth, Napavine brought 12 batters to the plate and scored seven runs on four hits, two walks, two errors, and a hit by pitch.
Jack Nelson put a cap on the Tigers’ offensive burst in the fifth with a bomb to left, rounding the bases for the second time this spring. He was one of two Napavine sluggers to record three hits Friday, as Landram was a triple away from the cycle while reaching base a total of five times.
“Honestly, I’ve just been hitting a lot this week after practice. I’ve been working on hitting and spending extra time in the cage,” Landram said.
Napavine finishes the regular season with a 15-5 record and a 13-3 mark in the Central 2B League, securing the number two seed and a first-round bye in the District 4 2B Tournament. The Tigers could face sixth-seeded Rainier, which gave them a couple of runs for their money in late March, in the second round May 10. Rainier’s first-round opponent remains to be determined as the Pacific 2B League still has games to play.
“Any time you go into our tournament and you get that first-round bye, it’s good because then you’re automatically in that two-loss situation,” Demarest said. “You don’t have to fight for your life right off the bat. Our league, there’s so much equity in it. We could get beat by any team in our league any given night, and I feel like we can beat any team in our league any given night.”
Onalaska finishes with a 5-14 record and a 5-11 league mark, but the Loggers have punched their ticket to the district tournament after a winless season last year. Head coach Weylin Womack’s bunch will likely face third-seeded Toledo on May 10 in the first round of districts.
“I thought we battled all year. Obviously, we lost some games that I felt like we should’ve won,” Womack said. “Going from a no-win season last year to five wins this year is a big improvement for these guys. We battled pretty well with some of the better teams, but we have our patented one bad inning every game. We’re gonna have to play a perfect game to beat Toledo.”
