Wildcat baseball takes league title, 4-29-11
Mount Si’s baseball team has had a dream spring. Leading into last Friday’s game with Sammamish, the Wildcats had won 14 straight, putting them on the verge of winning the Kingco regular season title as the team was undefeated in league play. One of Mount Si’s top seniors ensured that success continued.
Max Brown went 3-3 with a home run as the Wildcats won 6-2 over the Totems, earning them the regular season title and the coveted #1 seed in the league tournament which goes with it. This is Mount Si’s second straight Kingco regular season title; last year they won the title on a tiebreaker but did not advance out of the league tournament.
The Wildcats and Totems exchanged runs in both the second and third innings. After Sammamish scored their run in the second, Brown singled, then stole second base. After a fly out to center field by junior Justin Henak which allowed Brown to take third, senior Nate Sinner hit another fly out to center, scoring Brown. The Totems re-took the lead in the third, only to see the Wildcats re-tie the game in the bottom of that frame. Ryan Atkinson was hit by a pitch, then he stole second base. After Dustin Breshears flew out to right allowing Atkinson to take third, the junior scored on a single by Robb Lane to knot it up at 2-2.
Brown’s homer put the Wildcats in the lead to stay in the fourth. It was a high fly ball to left which initially looked as if would be caught routinely by the Sammamish left fielder, but the ball kept carrying and the Totem player ran out of room as the ball barely cleared the fence to give Brown his third round-tripper of the season. “I thought it was just a pop up at first then I saw him standing underneath it and thought he was going to catch it and then all the sudden, it’s over,” Brown said.
Mount Si scored again later in the frame as Sinner doubled, then stole third, and came in to score on a Daniel Besmer single. Mount Si scored one more run each in the fifth and sixth, and pitcher Reece Karalus shut down the Sammamish bats. The junior only gave up one earned run on just four hits, striking out 10 without a single walk. Karalus did not allow a hit over the final 4 2/3 innings. “Well I came out a little rough on my accuracy, but slowed it down to get my rhythm and then once I was in the rhythm, sped it up,” Karalus said.
Mount Si plays Lake Washington tomorrow at 7:00 at Lee Johnson Field in Kirkland.
