It’s not the outcome the Wolverines had hoped for.
But the timing and the competition couldn’t have been better as the Friday Harbor softball team gears up for post-season play on the heels of a decisive 10-2 defeat by Adna in their regular-season finale May 8 at home.
“There’s not a better team we could have played to prepare us for the playoffs,” catcher Khaili Radden said of the Pirates, undefeated at 17-0. “It’s been kind of a roller-coaster season for us so far, but we have a really good team. I know we have it in us and we’re confident we can get it together and do well in the playoffs.”
The Wolverines (12-8 overall, 8-4 league) will open the post season May 15 at Janicki Fields in Sedro-Woolley; the District 1 playoff gets under way at noon. They will open against either Lynden Christian or Nooksack Valley.
Senior Kerri Goff agrees that getting schooled by a team like Adna could pay dividends in the post season. Still, she had hoped for something other than a decisive defeat and giving up more than a dozen base hits in her final performance before the home crowd.
“It’s kind of hard going out that way,” Goff said. “But I think having good competition like that is going to help us. If you take away the first two innings, it was pretty much a tie score after that.”
Adna, the defending 2B state champs, wasted little time in putting the home team on its heels. The Pirates, who hung a 10-0, five-inning shutout on Orcas earlier in the day, lit up the Wolverines and the scoreboard with nine runs in their first two at-bats, highlighted by back-to-back homers in the second frame. They led 9-2 after three innings and second-string pitcher McKensie Lee scattered a half-dozen hits over six innings before giving way with Adna up 10-2 in the seventh.
Though staggered by the opening barrage, the Wolverines didn’t buckle. In fact, they played the Pirates to a standstill in the last five innings.
Junior Elle Guard led off the first inning with a hard-hit single and tallied a run on a ground-out by Maggie Andersen. Lindsey Banry drove in Friday Harbor’s second run with a grounder that sent Liz Taylor, who led off the second inning with a single into left.
