Tuesday softball shoutouts

 Hello everyone. Special announcement this morning. I am going to be adding a second set of shoutouts, for youth softball, each week here, on Tuesday’s following the finish of local weekend tournaments. Mount Si and Cedarcrest High School’s softball programs every year field tremendous talent and as you all know, the girls at both Valley high schools have been successful, with each program seeing a state tournament appearance in recent seasons. Part of why that is is, especially with Mount Si, the large number of girls competing in year-round travel ball, which is what we are focusing on in this weekly segment.

Before we get to all of the highlights from the weekend, we want to first shout out Anna Braukus this morning. The Mount Si senior shortstop late last Friday announced a verbal commitment to attend and play for the University of Nevada-Reno next season. We know she is very excited and why wouldn’t she be – the team this spring went 40-17 and is one of the stronger “mid-major” Division I college programs around with a coaching staff she tells us she is excited to work with next fall. However, the future for the Wolfpack, like it is for all of the sports programs at that university, is uncertain due to the impact of last week’s announcement about four of their league rivals leaving to join the Pac-12. While it is hoped that this uncertainty will not cause a negative impact for the program, that this is the case does give us a little pause. Hopefully, regardless of what happens, Braukus will be able to work hard and be successful down there as a college athlete, and we trust that will be the case. She plays her travel ball with the Portland-based Northwest Bullets program, whose fall schedule has not started yet and will not until the end of the month.

However, this past weekend saw a couple of tournaments locally for 14U and 16U teams. Last Saturday saw action at the USSSA’s Fall Brawl event in Kent. A pair of teams from Snoqualmie-based Wildcat Fastpitch Club competed in the event. Of note, WFC’s Duxbury 14U’s rallied with a six-run final inning to stun the Northwest Grapettes Fleury 7-6 in a contest at the tournament. Local middle-schoolers Katelyn Stobie and Kate Duxbury led the way; Stobie went 2-3 with two triples and three RBI’s and Duxbury held her own over three innings of work despite allowing five runs in four hits. WFC’s West 14U’s were also there and in a game, beat Freedom Fastpitch 5-3. Mount Si High freshman Reina Tahieri went the distance in the circle, allowing three runs on three hits walking three and striking out four for the ‘Cats.

Also there in the 16U division was a new Snoqualmie-based team, the Flame Fastpitch Gillespie. They beat SFC Lightning in a game down there 5-2 with a trio of Mount Si players doing the honors – Mary Salmon scattered two runs on three hits in a complete-game effort in the circle striking out six, and she was aided by both Sam Santo and Clara Connor, each of whom had a hit and scored a run, with Santo also driving one in. Way to go ladies! Also competing in that tournament with local ties was Ella Carter; the Redmond High School sophomore, whose older sister is Cedarcrest HS alum Michaela Carter, played with the Seattle Spice 16U Perez in the event.

The second tournament happened both on Saturday and Sunday. The Alliance organization held a qualifying tournament up in Snohomish County. The headliner team was Carnation’s Absolute Blast Rafferty. The 16U team has a little bit of a new Valley flavor this fall. Rafferty on Sunday went 4-1 with contributions from both of their local players. Returner Josie Fiala, from Cedarcrest, went 2-4 with two RBI’s headlining her performance on Sunday as Blast beat AI Bandits Stensby from Puyallup 7-5, and newcomer Bella Scappini, from Mount Si, also went 2-4 scoring a run and driving in another for Blast as they beat the southwest Washington-based Northwest Vandals 7-6. Scappini, a Mount Si junior, joined AbB after spending last season with the Northwest Grapettes program. Last season’s Wildcat representative on Rafferty’s team, Georgia Dennis, moved up to 18U and is this fall with the Blast’s 18U program, Voodoo Rhinehart.

There were also some preseason friendlies for local teams which featured Valley athletes over the weekend. Mount Si’s Madison Brand delivered the key hit, a double driving in two runs, for her team, Elevate Northwest Bowman, as the 16U team scored four runs in the second inning to blank their organizational counterparts, Elevate Armenta, 5-0 in the back end of a doubleheader on Sunday up in Bothell, near Elevate’s headquarters facility. Bowman split the pair with Armenta as the Armenta ladies won the first game 5-4. Fellow Wildcat Maggie Potoshnik is also with Elevate this season, as part of their 18U Benson team. She had a hit each in both games of a doubleheader that team played with SFC Fastpitch on Sunday, also split, with Elevate winning the first game 6-2 before SFC took the nightcap 3-1.

Also, KB Fastpitch 14U Riley, coached by Fall City resident and Mount Si alum Chris Riley, pocketed a pair of wins on Sunday over organizational counterparts aided by Valley players. Wildcat freshman Paige Yost went 2-2 with a double, stolen base and run scored as Riley blasted KB’s Garrett team 8-3, then Yost homered for the first time this fall leading Riley to an 18-6 blowout of KB’s Pietz team. Looks like the freshman class again for Mount Si’s softball program this year is going to be loaded. Maybe the school has enough turnout to maybe get three teams? We shall see.

We will be back next week to profile more players and give more shoutouts as the fall schedule gets rolling for area teams. The list of girls we mentioned here, that’s not all of them, there’s a number of others especially from Cedarcrest that we did not mention in this week’s segment so we apologize to all of you and hopefully we will be able to rectify that for most of you next week when we return with another edition of this softball shoutouts for you.

With that, so long for now and we’ll chat again perhaps on Sunday.