The Spartan baseball team rode a six-run fifth inning to defeat Ballard 8-4 on Thursday, but fell victim to a five-run Blanchet outburst on Tuesday and dropped a 6-3 decision.
“The toughest part of our schedule should be over,” said coach Jayson Gore, as many observers feel that Ballard and Blanchet, along with Seattle Prep – to whom the Spartans lost on Monday – are Bainbridge’s chief Metro rivals.
The fastpitch team swung to extremes on successive days, losing 12-2 at West Seattle on Tuesday before annihilating Cleveland 17-2 at home on Wednesday for the team’s first Metro League win. Both games were called after five innings due to the 10-run rule.
“What happened today should have happened yesterday,” said coach Steve Nelson after Wednesday’s game. “West Seattle is almost the same as Cleveland. They just had better pitching, and we played that game on Astroturf. Our infielders had a hard time fielding the ball, and they became tentative.”
Helen and Emily Silver both qualified for the 2004 Olympic Trials at last week’s spring US Senior National Swimming Championships at the University of Minnesota.
Helen celebrated her 18th birthday by placing sixth in the 100 meter backstroke on Friday, clocking a lifetime best 1:04.31.
The Bainbridge Island Rowing Club’s Junior Men’s Novice Four won its heat at Saturday’s 40th Annual Green Lake Spring Regatta and posted the overall fastest time in its category to highlight BIRC’s first-ever competition.
Two games termed “very winnable” by fastpitch coach Steve Nelson went the other way as the Spartans lost 7-4 at Blanchet on Friday, then dropped Monday’s home opener to Seattle Prep 5-3.
“These games aren’t won, they’re lost,” said Nelson. “We had Blanchet on the ropes, but we gave the game away. Mental errors just killed us.”
Like hundreds of island kids before him, Houston Wade began playing baseball in the Little League T-ball program, then progressed through the minors and eventually the Majors league.
Three years in Babe Ruth followed, but then heredity threw a high hard one at the youngster.
“When I was 15, I hit a growth spurt,” Wade said. “I grew 13 inches in a year.”
At that point, he stood six feet, four inches, yet weighed just 118 pounds – “I had no speed, no mass, no anything.”
Not surprisingly, he wasn’t recruited for the Spartan baseball team.
The Bainbridge Island Rowing Club is about to make a bit of history.
BIRC – a non-profit organization founded last year – will enter five junior crews in Saturday’s Green Lake Spring Sprints. That marks the club’s competitive debut against established junior crews, and is the first of what may be as many as five spring regattas.
There was no doubt in girls lacrosse coach Tami Tommila’s mind about the crucial moment in Friday’s season-opening 8-7 home loss to defending state champion Lakeside.
Adam Brenneman and Mitka von Reis Crooks both had hat tricks as the Spartan soccer team overwhelmed visiting Klahowya 8-0 on Thursday to even their record at 1-1.
Two nights earlier, playing in miserable conditions – temperatures in the high 30s, a chill rain and wind and a puddle-filled field – the Spartans dropped their season opener 5-2 to Mercer Island.
In Thursday’s game, Klahowya missed an early chance to score when a shot hit the Spartan goal post. Then Brenneman took a pass from Kris Ley, moved to his right through the penalty box, then drilled a hard ground shot into the left corner of the net in the seventh minute.
The boys lacrosse team has high standards.
In the aftermath of Wednesday’s season-opening 7-1 win against visiting Lakeside, “ugly” was one of the first words from co-captain Adam Smith to describe his term’s performance.
“We were rusty and had a lot of butterflies,” he said. “Our attack seemed like we lost our chi. We didn’t flow and we didn’t move.”
What’s likely to be one of the best track meets at Spartan Stadium in recent memory is slated for May 2 as the BHS girls have a late season matchup with Rainier Beach (last year’s state 3A champ) and Holy Names (3A champs the three years prior to that).
The Spartans are no slouches themselves, having won their first-ever district title last spring. They return this year with most of the athletes who made it happen.
The boys’ meet that day isn’t bad either, with last year’s state runner-up O’Dea and Beach’s outstanding sprint crew.
After losing five seniors – most of the group that competed in last May’s Interscholastic National Team Racing Championships in Massachusetts – to graduation, sailing coach Susan Kaseler acknowledges that “as a whole, this is a fairly inexperienced team.
The Spartan baseball team’s road to the state tournament now runs along I-90, according to new coach Jayson Gore.
While the Metro League typically has a place or two in the 16-team bracket, the real baseball power in District 2 lies east of Lake Washington, especially in Issaquah.
