Tuesday softball shouts

 Good Tuesday morning and I have again for you this morning our weekly look at the girls' softball scene locally as the fall portion of the 2024-25 campaign is underway.

We want to start off by having a look at a tremendously successful weekend for one of your Valley-based programs. Wildcat Fastpitch Club is now in its third season of operation and the program, based in Snoqualmie, has seen steady growth as it becomes not simply an option for local kids, but kids all over the Eastside. This season, the team has three 14U squads in addition to one 12U and a 10U, and this is off of one 12U team at the start three years ago. Two of those 14U teams met for a tournament title on Sunday up in Lynnwood.

WFC's West team, coached by program head Chris West, and WFC's Johnson team, coached by Ryan Johnson, squared off for the USSSA's Smashing Pumpkins' 14U "Silver" division crown up at Meadowdale Playfield. The contest was all West as they rolled 10-0 behind a two-hitter from Reina Tahieri, a freshman this fall at Mount Si High School, and a homer from Dominique Greene, but Johnson's crew handled affairs well, opening the tournament last Saturday with an 8-5 win over the Kirkland Merchants. In that game, three players - Addie Bell from Issaquah High School, Seattle's Nichole Tucci-Ringstad, and Mount Si's Addie Porter - each had two hits. Porter had a double, scored two runs and drove in a third while Tucci-Ringstead scored two runs and drove in two more.

The two teams and a third coached by Troy Duxbury make up the 14U trio with WFC this fall. West, Johnson and Duxbury all are co-founders of the Wildcat program and all three coaches live in the upper Valley. Several players from each of the teams are Valley middle and high school students, with the rest coming from locations primarily across the Eastside. Folks can get more information by Googling Wildcat Fastpitch Club to get to their home page.

Fantastic stuff there. We should also mention as well that the lower Valley has its own travel youth softball program this fall, the Valley Vipers. Their 12U unit competed in this tournament and ended up tied for third in that age bracket's "Silver" division after a heartbreaking 11-10 loss to the Seattle-based Diamond Dusters. Those girls played a total of four games in the tournament with three of them being walkoff losses. A lot of pain and heartbreak, but this is what good teams have to endure a little bit of in order to get better and become strong, championship level teams. I am working right now to get communication links set up with that program and hope to have more coverage of that group in this weekly segment in the future.

The Vipers also have a 14U program and they were among a large number of teams that competed in the main local tournament this past weekend, the Flame Invitational sponsored by the Bellevue-based Flame program, which until the emergence of both the Vipers and WFC was the choice program for Valley players; even now, that program continues to have locally-based 16U and 18U teams and I'll give those clubs a mention in a moment. The Viper 14U's came up short in the playoffs on Sunday in the 14B division at Phil Johnson Complex in Everett, falling on a walkoff 9-8 to the Seattle-based Sundodgers after having taken an 8-0 lead out of the gate in the contest.

The Flame's 16U local entry, coached by Valley resident Susan Gillespie, also was up in Everett in the 16U division and also fell short of a trophy on the weekend. Of note, several players with ties to the Valley did well. Cedarcrest's Izzy Ojeda had two hits including a triple scoring two runs Sunday for the Flame in a 10-2 loss to the Enumclaw-based Washington Avengers that ended the weekend for the local ladies, while Mount Si's Mary Salmon and Sam Santo did the heavy lifting this past Saturday in a pool game with Firecrackers Washington. Salmon went the distance in the circle allowing three runs on five hits striking out nine while Santo doubled twice and drove in a run as the Flame finished in a 3-3 tie with the Maple Valley-based squad in a game that ended in the tie due to time limits.

Among other notes from the Flame tournament, there were a trio of players from the Valley that made it onto this segment's "Bomb Squad" for home run hitters. Mount Si's Ally Hetzel hit two homers Sunday for the Bellevue-based Washington Ladyhawks Simpson as they made a strong push in the 18U division but ended up in a tie for third in the tournament, and Cedarcrest's Abby Combs and Paityn Craig both made their way onto the squad as well. Combs earned her slot with a homer for the Auburn-based Washington Acers McCabe in a 7-3 win over Kenmore-based KB Fastpitch while Craig pocketed her first of the fall as far as we know for Absolute Blast Pettit as the 16U squad from Woodinville rolled in a game last Saturday over the Canadian-based Yale Softball Academy 20-0. Among the other locals that played in the tournament this weekend included Red Wolves Josie Fiala and Autumn Rafferty with that Rafferty crew, fellow CHS'er Olivia Lowell with Washington Ladyhawks Campbell's 14U team, and Mount Si's Jenna Nowak with the Pettit crew.

The Flame's 18U team, coached by Valley resident Pat Balzer, was in action at the Smashing Pumpkins event and took home a tournament title on Sunday beating a Sundodgers squad 7-3. A five-run fifth inning for the Flame proved to be the difference with a pair of locals chipping in - Cedarcrest's Aspen Balzer, the coach's daughter, was 1-2 with a double and run scored, while Mount Si's Zoe Crawford was 1-3 with an RBI.

Rounding things out, we finish out the weekend in Chehalis with what we'd have to say was not exactly the result that was anticipated for the Woodinville-based Voodoo Rhinehart, but it was still a good weekend nonetheless for that 18U team. Voodoo finished second in the PNW Challenge dropping their only game of the tournament in their finale Sunday 10-0 to the southwest Washington-based Lady Rangers, and this is after they had cruised through the remainder of their games going 5-0 outscoring their foes by a combined count of 50-9 in those five wins. Mount Si's Westyn Haigh and Georgia Dennis both chipped in all weekend, Haigh getting a triple and RBI Sunday for the Voodoo in a 10-0 win over the Oregon Thunder and Dennis going 1-2 with a walk and run scored for the Eastside team in a 6-1 win last Saturday over the Rampage, also based in southwest Washington. Homers aplenty on the weekend from familiar names as well for Voodoo - Monroe's Vivian Knuckey, Inglemoor's Alexa Saladin and Skyline's Shea Staley cleared the fence with moonshots during the course of the weekend among others. Good stuff there.

Before we go, speaking of the Voodoo, I want to thank their program and coach Clint Rhinehart for providing fans and distant family members of their players with the opportunity to watch the games online via YouTube. They are one of two clubs that I know of – the other being the Northwest Bullets Campos 18U’s with Mount Si’s Anna Braukus – that is broadcasting games this way using the SidelineHD/Mevo platform. With many teams utilizing GameChanger, a service that at this point does not have apps on the streaming platforms such as AmazonFire or Roku, the opportunity for yours truly to support some of our local young ladies by watching them on TV through YouTube was a nice bonus. I would encourage everyone to consider, in the absence of streaming platform apps for GC streams, to set up a sidecar broadcast for their teams through SidelineHD and YouTube to make it easier for families and fans to see the kids in action this winter.

With that, that is all for this week. See you next Tuesday with another round of shoutouts for you from the softball diamond.

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