With Yakima County getting 2 inches of snow Friday, the W.F. West baseball team wasn’t exactly sure what it would find going over the pass Saturday. Getting to Selah in the early afternoon, the Bearcats arrived to a relatively dry field and got to get their season underway, splitting a doubleheader with a 10-6 win and a 3-0 loss.
“It was good to see the guys play,” first-year WFW coach Jesse Elam said. “Definitely a lot more positives today than negatives, but we still have some things to build on.”
The first game of the day swung on one huge two-out rally. Trailing 1-0 after two innings, the Bearcats went down with back-to-back strikeouts to start the top of the third before Deacon Meller got things going with a double. Jeron Martin singled him home to tie the game, and after Gavin Fugate reached, Avery Staloch gave W.F. West its first lead of the season with a 2-RBI double.
Not slowing down, Evan Stajduhar blew the game open with a triple that turned into a little-league home run. By the time the Vikings got back in the dugout, the Bearcats had themselves a 7-1 lead.
“Our bats were definitely there,” Elam said. “We put the ball in play hard.”
Fugate and Stajduhar both went 2 for 4 at the plate to lead the Bearcats, who banged out nine hits.
Hunter Lutman went 2 ⅓ innings in the start, allowing three earned runs on six walks and three hits. Riggs Westlund gave W.F. West 3 ⅓ innings of relief, striking out nine, and Gavin Fugate slammed the door, striking out the side in a clean seventh.
But while W.F. West’s three pitchers in the first game combined for 17 strikeouts, Selah ace Carter Seely matched them by himself in a dominant complete-game, one-hit shutout in Game 2. The Central Arizona commit fanned 17 Bearcats, with Meller logging W.F. West’s only hit of the game.
Going up against that, Elam sent out a pair of freshmen, who gave him a whole lot to work with. Miles Martin struck out three in 3 ⅔ innings of work, giving up three runs — two of which were earned. Connor Coleman went the rest of the way, allowing one hit and striking out three more.
“Those two freshmen were outstanding,” Elam said. “They threw well enough to win, we just ran into a buzzsaw.”
W.F. West will return to this side of the mountains but get another stiff test far from home next, heading to the RORC in Ridgefield to take on Lynden.
“We’re trying to load up our non-league (schedule) with some tough teams to get that experience of playing in those big games against tough teams, and challenge our guys,” Elam said.
