Yellow Pages
TACOMA — Four games, four shutouts, one state title.
In a dominant single day of state tournament softball, the Sedro-Woolley Cubs brought home the school’s first state softball title Saturday, capping a long day with a 10-0 victory over Bainbridge.
The Class 3A state championship game was shortened to six innings by the 10-run rule and ended, most appropriately, with Maddie Lynch-Crumrine scoring and then Bailey Brewer sliding home with the 10th run.
As they had all season, and most of the past four years, the two seniors split the action on the mound, each twirling two shutouts.
“It feels wonderful. We’ve dreamed about this since we were 9 years old,” Lynch-Crumrine said. “It’s been the best year.”
“It feels amazing,” Brewer agreed. “It feels like a great accomplishment.”
In the four games, the Cubs outscored their opponents 29-0. The Cubs pitchers gave up a total of 10 hits.
“I could not imagine it,” Cubs coach Laura Schmidt said. “I knew they were great pitchers, but it’s just amazing.”
The tournament is normally played over two days, so the teams that make it to the championship game only play twice a day. But rain wiped out the first day of the tournament, forcing all the action to be moved to Saturday.
Softball pitchers can throw two games in a day comfortably. Three is a stretch. Four is brutal.
Teams with one pitcher were scrambling. The Cubs had no such worries, having alternated Brewer and Lynch-Crumrine all season.
“It’s such a big advantage,” Lynch-Crumrine said. “We have each other’s back.”
While the championship wasn’t clinched until late in the evening, the biggest hurdle came early in the day.
The Cubs and Union had been the two top-ranked teams most of the season, and Sedro-Woolley’s loss in the district championship game meant it had to face Union in the first round.
“Before every game, we’ve been saying, ‘Union’s coming to town,’” Lynch-Crumrine said. “Even in this game (the championship) we said it.”
Starting in the third inning, the Cubs lit into Union’s star pitcher Mariah Dawson, who earlier this year set the state’s all-time strikeout record. The Cubs banged out 11 hits against Dawson and they never seemed in danger again.
Against Union, Sedro-Woolley pushed across a run and, with two on, freshman catcher Kaylee Lamphiear, battling the flu, broke the game open by crushing a two-run double.
Brewer took over from there, allowing just one hit in the final five innings. She struck out 12, one more than Dawson, and finished with a two-hitter in the 8-0 win.
The onslaught continued immediately in the second game against Juanita, also an 8-0 victory. Briley Brewer’s two-run single capped a three-run outburst in the first and the Cubs never looked back. Lamphiear had three hits, as did Briley Brewer. Lynch-Crumrine twirled a three-hitter.
Bailey Brewer threw a no-hitter in the semifinal contest, striking out 10 in a 3-0 victory over West Valley (Yakima). The Cubs only managed three hits, but took advantage of some sun-aided fielding errors to score three unearned runs. Cheyenne Best had a two-out RBI double to break open the game and scored when Emmie Moser followed with a single.
The championship game was never in doubt. The Cubs scored in every inning but the fourth.
Lynch-Crumrine banged two doubles to drive in three runs, the second of which nearly cleared the fence for what would have been a storybook grand slam to end the game. Instead, she had to wait two more batters before hugging Bailey Brewer after Brewer slid home with the final run.
• Eric Francis can be reached at 360-416-2131 or by e-mail at .
Read more local news in the Skagit Valley Herald and the Anacortes American, or read it online in the E-edition
