by Eric Francis
ANACORTES — The Burlington-Edison baseball team had spent the past few days hearing about how good Cedarcrest pitcher Travis Cook is, and also hearing how important it would be to jump on him before he got settled in on the mound.
Tigers’ catcher Dylan Boe took the lesson to heart. The first batter of the game, Boe homered off Cook, starting Burlington-Edison on the way to a 4-3 victory.
While the third-seeded Tigers were moving on to the second round, the Anacortes team that slid by them into the district’s No. 2 seed was falling to Lakewood 6-4 in a game that featured wild pitching and a wild final play. Burlington-Edison will face Sehome in a winner-to-state game at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
“We didn’t play well last week, but we had a good week of practice,” Tigers coach John Thurmond said. “We were ready, and we played well.”
Anacortes plays Bellingham at 2 p.m. in a loser-out game still needing two wins to clinch a state berth.
“I don’t think it will be tough to bounce back because we battled,” Anacortes coach Pat Swapp said. “It’s a shame we were down three instead of one in the seventh, but I love the way we battled.”
The Tigers finished with six hits against the Washington State-bound Cook and his fastball around 90 mph. Quinn Holt had two hits and scored twice, and Cole Whited had two hits, including an RBI double.
“He’s one of the best kids in the state, no doubt,” Thurmond said. “If we didn’t attack him early it could have been a long afternoon. Dylan set the tone.”
The Seahawks faced a relatively hard thrower themselves in Lakewood’s Jordan Stauffer, but Stauffer didn’t have his best command on the day, walking three and hitting four. His wildness was effective, however, as the Seahawks had just three hits during his 6 1/3 innings of work.
“He had a pretty good arm,” Swapp said. “He was kinda all over the place, and sometimes that makes him hard to hit.”
Anacortes trailed 4-3 going into the seventh, and the Cougars picked up a couple insurance runs with the help of a controversial play at second.
With a seeming force play at second, the umpire ruled Cory Campbell was off the base at second, so instead of a runner at first and two outs, the Wolves had two on. Both came in to score on Cory Moore’s two-out single.
Those insurance runs would prove big for the Wolves. Down to their final strike with two out, both Hayden Knight and Jackson Kirkpatrick found a way to get on base and prolong the inning. Braiden Darling scored on a balk to bring Anacortes back within two.
After Kirkpatrick’s walk reloaded the bases, Casey Lloyd hit a grounder to the right of Stauffer, who had moved to shortstop. Stauffer threw to third to try to get the force on Knight, but the umpires made no signal. Lakewood started running off the field, thinking the game was over as Marcus Abbott scored. Knight scrambled to his feet and came home, touching the plate with what could have been the tying run. Kirkpatrick was later thrown out at third as Lakewood realized the game might not be over.
After conferring, the umpires ruled Knight was out on the original force play at third and the game was over.
Casey Lloyd homered leading off the fourth for the Seahawks.
• Eric Francis can be reached at 360-416-2131 or by e-mail at
