SEDRO-WOOLLEY — The state softball tournament, and high school softball in general, can be an intense time for a lot of players.

For Sedro-Woolley’s Maddie Lynch-Crumrine and many other top players around the area and the state, this is the relaxing, just-for-fun portion of the softball year.

“High school softball is enjoyable,” Lynch-Crumrine said. “You don’t have the greater stress of having a college coach watching you. It’s fun, and you get to play with your friends and play against other teams you know. It’s a more friendly, but still a very competitive atmosphere.”

Lynch-Crumrine and the Sedro-Woolley Cubs had a lot of fun this year, going through the tough Northwest Conference undefeated and placing seventh at the Class 3A State Tournament last month. As half of the Cubs’ dominant pitching tandem and the anchor in their lineup, Lynch-Crumrine earned conferemce MVP honors and has now been selected as the Skagit Valley Herald Softball Player of the Year.

“I had a lot of fun this year,” Lynch-Crumrine said. “I was happy. Not being able to go for five years and saying, ‘Hey, we took seventh place’ ... I was pretty proud of that. There were some things I could look back on say ‘I wish that had happened our way’ or ‘I wish we had just not made that mistake,’ but there’s always next year.”

Lynch-Crumrine was a driving force behind the team’s offense. She hit .549 on the season with five home runs and 17 extra-base hits. She drove in 25 runs and scored 32, all team-high numbers.

“She helped us in the number four spot,” Cubs coach Laura Schmidt said. “She was just really consistent, and stayed with those numbers. She had a stretch there with an eight-game hitting streak where she was hitting .600. You don’t see those numbers very often. She was really consistent, and she hit for more power than last year.”

On the mound, she split time with Bailey Brewer to form one of the most effective pitching tandems in the state. She went 11-3 with a 0.44 earned run average and had 156 strikeous in 96 innings.
Normally an outfielder when she’s not pitching, Lynch-Crumrine moved to shortstop and finished the season with a .970 fielding percentage.

“I felt like being an upper-classman, I kind of stepped it up a little more,” she said. “I haven’t played shortstop since I was 10 except in high school, but if that’s really where the team needs me, I’ll do what they need.”

Now at the end of her junior year, the business angle of the sport intrudes. The tournament in Las Vegas is an “exposure” event, designed to bring coaches and potential recruits together.

It also marks the first of several other states Lynch-Crumrine will visit over the next month, playing tournaments in Oregon, Colorado, California and, if the team does well enough, Oklahoma.

“It’s still a game to me, but it’s kind of my security for college. It’s going to hopefully pay for college and be my future team for four years. My eyes are still wide open. I don’t really have a specific place I really want to go to. It’s my future, so it’s a little stressful, but it’s still a game. It’s still fun.”

• Eric Francis can be reached at 360-416-2131 or by e-mail at .