Valley high school spring sports postseason begins tonight with baseball. With Mount Si High School’s baseball squad not making it to their postseason this spring, Cedarcrest High School’s team is representing the Valley in the high school baseball postseason. And while the expectation is that tonight’s game could be potentially the only game they play, this Red Wolves team is going to try its hardest to make sure that is not the case. CHS hits the road as soon as school gets out headed north to Bellingham for the Northwest 2A District play-in game with Sehome.
WESCO CONFERENCE 2A/3A BASEBALL
NORTHWEST 2A DISTRICT PLAYOFFS, OPENING ROUND PLAY-IN, LOSER OUT
CEDARCREST RED WOLVES @ SEHOME MARINERS
SEHOME HIGH SCHOOL, BELLINGHAM, 5:15 P.M. FIRST PITCH
Both the Red Wolves and Mariners come into tonight’s games under .500 on the season. Cedarcrest finished the regular season 5-15 while Sehome finished 5-13-1. The Red Wolves are ninth seed in this tournament while Sehome is the eighth seed and the winner meets Lynden, the top district seed, Thursday in the first round of the district playoffs in Anacortes.
So how does Cedarcrest overcome the long odds perhaps that are expected and get themselves into the fun in Anacortes? Well, junior Luke Thompson is probably going to need to be the one leading it. He is leading the team in both hitting and on-base percentage, hitting .354 this season with one homer – the only one CHS has hit all season – and an OBP of .475. Thompson is also the team’s ace pitcher and is likely going to get the call to the mound for the starting assignment there tonight. The junior is 3-1 with a 1.17 earned run average; in 35 2/3 innings he’s allowed only 19 hits and six earned runs, walking 13 and striking out 55. So longtime coach Scott Goldsberry should feel comfortable knowing that Thompson should be able to handle affairs well.
But for the Red Wolves to really feel good, it’s going to have to get other contributors too and that has been a bit of a challenge this spring. Cedarcrest as a team is only hitting .221 and has only scored 59 runs, an average of just under three runs a contest thus far this season. So they’ve got to pick things up a bit for them to be able to make a deep postseason run. We’d look for junior infielder Quinn Larson and senior infielder Cooper Ayers to be strong contributors tonight. Larson is hitting just under .300 on the season and has 17 hits in 67 plate appearances while Ayers has 14 hits in 64 PA’s with a team-leading 11 RBI’s. He is hitting .259 on the spring.
Sehome has had its challenges in a strong Northwest Conference this spring, just as Cedarcrest has in the Wesco. The Mariners faced one Wesco opponent this spring – Arlington – and fell to them, so that might be a bellwether. But Sehome comes in on a two-game win streak, so they may also be getting into midseason form at the right time, too. Junior infielder/pitcher Ryder McGrath and senior outfielders Pierson Lewis and Roen Schonlein could be players to watch for the green and gold of the Mariners in this one.
From the looks of this, we’d like Cedarcrest here if it can get Thompson some run support, which as we mentioned has been a bit hard to come by this spring with the offense struggling to some extent. But Sehome comes from a tough conference, so we’d expect it to be anybody’s game. That said, though, regardless of the end result of tonight’s game and the playoff run, the future for the Red Wolves hopefully will be a bright one. The program, which was a perennial 2A state contender as recently as 2016 when then-ace Aaron Davenport, now with the Cleveland Guardians professional organization, led Cedarcrest to a state runner-up finish, has fallen on hard times over the past few seasons.
A combination of effects from the COVID pandemic shutdowns and just the general challenging environment they’ve faced in Wesco has resulted in a reduced level of turnout which has cost them the ability for the past two or three seasons to field a junior varsity program. With the move to Kingco and the likely placing of the program in the lowest tier for competitive balance scheduling and the resulting more comparable opposition they should see next season, it is hoped the team will start having more success and perhaps get some growth in interest and resulting turnout that will allow this program to rebuild itself back into what once was for them.
We’re going to say this one is a low-scoring affair and if it is that, we like Thompson and company to advance. Take Cedarcrest in a tight one.
CEDARCREST 2, SEHOME 1
Snoqualmie Valley Sports Journal 