RIDGEFIELD — Make no mistake, W.F. West is excited to have the chance to defend its district title. After an 8-0 win over Ridgefield in a district semifinal on Wednesday, the Bearcats celebrated accordingly.
But as much as the district title game was at the forefront of the postgame discussions, the optimism and excitement about what’s to follow was just as prevalent.
“We want a different ending,” Connor Coleman said. “That’s all we want.”
Now that the Bearcats are officially back in the state tournament, they can turn their attention to another deep run, and they’re already hoping to improve on their back-to-back third-place finishes.
“This is big,” Cole Ozretich said. “Hopefully, we can take state this year.”
If the Bearcats put together a performance like they did on Wednesday, they’ll have as good of a chance as anybody.
W.F. West (18-5) took an early lead and never looked back, scoring in five separate innings while Cole Ozretich shut things down on the mound.
Ozretich pitched a complete-game, two-hit shutout, striking out nine and walking just one. While it seemed to everyone in the park that he was on his A-Game from the first pitch, Ozretich admitted that it took him a bit to settle in and find consistency.
“I couldn’t find my fastball in the first couple innings,” Ozretich said. “But I ended up coming back strong with all my pitches.”
Even with that, he was able to retire 21 of the 24 batters he faced, slowly but surely weaving together what W.F. West coach Jesse Elam called “one of the best pitching performances” he’s seen as a coach.
“That was an absolute masterpiece,” Elam said. “That’s about as good as it gets.”
Before the final batter, Elam thought that Ozretich was at 75 pitches, and he considered pulling him so he could potentially pitch on Saturday.
After double-checking the pitch count, though, they realized he was already at 76, putting him in the three-days rest portion of the pitch count rules. Once he realized that, Elam was more than happy to let Elam get the final out.
“Let him finish what he started,” Elam said.
The Bearcat offense did more than enough to support Ozretich, giving him a cushion before he even took the mound.
Deacon Meller opened the scoring on a wild pitch in the first, and Coleman drilled a solo home run in the second.
The Bearcats scored on two more wild pitches to push the lead to 4-0 after five, and in the sixth, an RBI single from Grady Westlund and a sacrifice fly from Meller made it 6-0.
An RBI single from Miles Martin and another run on a wild pitch in the seventh made it eight for good measure.
Meller, Martin, Coleman, and Westlund tallied two hits each, and as a team, W.F. West went 10 for 30 at the plate.
“Bearcats hit in May,” Elam said. “It’s good to be having those types of games right now.”
Before they take the field in the state tournament, the Bearcats will take on Columbia River in the district title game on Saturday. A win would give W.F. West its second district championship in a row, and its sixth since 2016.
“The job’s not done,” Elam said. “We still got work to do.”
