LACEY — Against all odds.
Northwest Christian baseball second-year head coach Jordan Potis told his players as they sat on the steps outside the Regional Athletic Complex’s field No. 5 visitors’ dugout that they accomplished something remarkable in their season opener Monday against Wahkiakum.
When he said “against all odds,” he meant it.
The Wolverines barely had a preseason to start this spring season and couldn’t compete in their scheduled practice games due to rain. As a result, their first game-like action of the spring came in the regular season opener against Wahkiakum, a team that advanced to the 1B state quarterfinals last season.
After blowing a 4-1 lead and trailing 12-8 entering the bottom of the seventh, Northwest Christian stunned the Mules with a five-run frame, capped off by a walk-off single by senior Jack Vahey to win it 13-12.
The Wolverines did it “cold,” the coaches told them after the game, referring to their lack of preparation adjacent to a game.
“Those are the types of games we would lose in the past,” Potis said. “It shows a lot about the type of attitude that I think this team is going to have this year.”
Northwest Christian sophomore right-handed pitcher Marshall Guyer took the mound and had some early bumps in the first inning. He plunked his second batter and allowed him to score the game’s first run on an RBI single. He dashed out of any further damage, leaving runners stranded at third and second with his second strikeout of the game.
Sophomore Jadon Dillingham came up clutch in the bottom of the first, scoring two by way of a line-drive single to center field. Ronin Vahey walked with the bases loaded to give Northwest Christian a 3-1 lead.
Guyer earned three more strikeouts in the second inning and another in the third. In the bottom of the third, Dillingham’s baserunning supplied Guyer with some more run support. The center fielder earned a walk, stole second and then gunned for third base before Wahkiakum’s infield mishap trying to catch him stealing allowed him to score.
Guyer struck out the first two batters of the fourth but was taken out of the game after a walk. He finished the day with eight strikeouts, two hits allowed, two walks and one earned run surrendered in 3.2 innings of work.
“My slider and my fastball were working for me,” Guyer said. “I also have a changeup. My fastball tops out at 90 mph and I sit mid-80s. About two months ago, I hit 90 for the first time. I’m working hard, trying to stay consistent and keep the accuracy up.”
In the top of the fifth, Wahkiakum erupted for seven runs off of Northwest Christian's bullpen. The Mules scored first on an identical play to Dillingham’s run two innings prior, forcing an errant throw and scoring as the runner attempted to steal third. Luke Nickel replaced Myles McLain on the mound for the Wolverines, and after getting his first two batters out in a 4-2 game, Nickel gave up a run on a wild pitch and two more on four straight walks.
With the score tied at 4-4, Wahkiakum then took a four-run lead with two swings, a two-run single and a two-run double. The Wolverines managed to grab two runs back in the fifth to make it 8-6.
The runs kept piling on in the sixth. Wahkiakum tallied two on a single to center in the top half, and Northwest Christian answered in the bottom half, loading the bases with nobody out and scoring two on sacrifices by Parker Cox and Guyer. The Mules took a 12-8 advantage in the seventh as more clutch baserunning turned into a sacrifice fly and a run on a dropped third strike.
With his team down four runs entering the seventh, Potis gave the Wolverines a rallying message that it apparently needed in order to pull off the comeback.
“I told them that we had overcome everything that you can in a single baseball game. We had injuries, we had poor play, we had ups and downs, and we had everything thrown at us,” he said. “I told them, ‘You’ve got one more half inning to see if you’re going to let it beat you.’”
Bennett Hall led off the seventh by getting hit by a pitch for the second time, and Dillingham moved him to second with a single. Ronin Vahey walked to load the bases with one out, and McLain walked to score a run and cut the margin to three. Cox delivered a clutch bloop single that dropped in the gap in right field on a 3-2 pitch to score Dillingham.
Guyer ripped a shot down the left-field line, scoring McLain and Vahey to tie the game at 12-12. With Cox at third and Guyer at second, Jack Vahey looked at ball one before drilling a ground ball past the diving glove of the Mules first baseman and scoring Cox for the walk-off victory.
“I was getting nervous because I had two bad at-bats, but my coach got my confidence high and I knew how to put it in the gap,” Vahey said. “We’re all pumped. We’ve got a lot of young guys. We’re working hard. State’s always our goal. That’s our motto this year.”
Potis hopes this game is both an anomaly and a trend this season. An anomaly because he and his coaching staff can only take so much stress in the back-and-forth action, but a trend because of his team’s resilience and fight against all odds.
“The biggest change from last year is that no-quit mentality. We definitely saw that in the final inning,” Potis said. “We saw it throughout the game. Guys just never gave up, and I’m really proud of that.”
Northwest Christian (1-0) will face Darrington at the Regional Athletic Complex Thursday afternoon.
