Yellow Pages
ANACORTES — Sitting on an early four-run lead and looking to break the game open in the second inning, the Burlington-Edison baseball team knew vanquishing Sehome couldn’t be this easy.
It turned out to be anything but easy, but the Tigers held on and ended two years of frustration against the Mariners on Tuesday with a 4-3 victory, securing a state-tournament berth in the process.
The victory means the Tigers can do no worse than second place in the Northwest 2A District Tournament. They will face Archbishop Murphy in the championship game Saturday.
“This feels great,” Tigers pitcher Ian Capron said. “Sehome’s been our nemesis the past two years. We got to state two years ago and got bounced in the first round. It’s been our goal to get back to state and go further than that.”
First they had to get by the Mariners, something the Tigers have not done in two seasons. Sehome won both earlier meetings this year, each by one run.
“Every time we play these guys it’s a nailbiter,” Sehome coach Gary Hatch said.
“We knew we were in for a battle,” Burlington-Edison coach John Thurmond said. “We were up on them early in last year’s tournament, and they beat us by a run. We were up on them early in the first game this year, and they beat us by a run.”
Sehome drops in a winner-to-state, loser-out contest against Anacortes. The Seahawks kept their season alive earlier in the day with a 14-3 pasting of Bellingham.
Capron was the steadying force for the Tigers, allowing only two earned runs and striking out nine. He breezed through the first five innings, allowing only an unearned run that required three errors to cross the plate.
“Capron was good tonight. Very, very good,” Hatch said.
Chris Shank’s two-out, two-run single in the sixth brought Sehome back within one, but Capron finished the seventh strong.
“Ian had a good night,” Thurmond said. “We made a couple mistakes behind him and Ian was able to pitch through that.”
The Tigers jumped on top with three in the top of the first, the big blow being a Quinn Holt RBI double. Troy O’Neill drove in the third run on a perfectly executed suicide squeeze to score Tyler McLeod.
That inning would also begin a disturbing trend for the Tigers, as they had the first of six runners thrown out on the base paths. Burlington-Edison would add one more in the second, but missed out on many opportunities to break the game open in subsequent innings.
The Anacortes Seahawks did not miss out on any opportunities in their win, scoring at least twice each time they got to the plate.
“After (Saturday’s) game, we were fired up,” Seahawks catcher Gabe Aguilar said, referring to the team’s opening loss to Lakewood. “We got out there and we were ready.”
The key rally came in the third. After Bellingham had scored twice to cut Anacortes’ lead to 4-2, the Seahawks stormed back with six runs to break the game open. Aguilar’s two-run double was the big blow in the inning, which was also helped along by a pair of errors on potential inning-ending grounders.
“I think we burst their bubble in that inning,” Anacortes coach Pat Swapp said. “That was very important.”
The Seahawks tacked on four more in the fourth. The game was stopped in the fifth inning by the 10-run rule.
Aguilar also had an RBI triple. He and Braiden Darling each finished with a pair of hits and three RBI. Jordan Kirkpatrick was 3-for-3 and scored three times. Wyatt Hendricks and Hayden Knight each scored twice.
Cory Campbell allowed two runs in four innings of work for the win.
Now the Seahawks’ season comes down to a battle with two-time defending state champion Sehome. Swapp said the team’s split with Sehome during the regular season helped overcome any sort of Mariner mystique his players might have felt.
“We’re not afraid of Sehome, and that’s half the battle,” Swapp said. “They’ve won state now, but the kids aren’t intimidated.
“We’ve got a game to go to state and we’re playing on our home field. That’s not a bad position to be in.”
• Eric Francis can be reached at 360-416-2131 or by e-mail at
