ONALASKA — The coaching staff at Onalaska threw down just about every bag of dirt it had stored up in the equipment shed to make its diamond playable Tuesday, creating an island of lighter-brown infield inside a ring of mud in foul territory by the dugouts.
Their efforts worked; the Loggers hosted Rainier for a doubleheader on a day that saw every other baseball and softball game in Lewis County get nixed before noon. But nobody was more grateful than Rainier eighth grader Ryleigh Cruse, made the Loggers look like they were still stuck in the mud in a 1-0 shutout in the one game that would count toward the Central 2B League standings.
“We got the one that matters,” Rainier coach Katie Qualls said. “That’s all we were trying to do. We’ve got basically the one pitcher, so it’s hard. She’s young, but she’s really come through. Going 5-0 coming into this, expectations were a little bit high. We just wanted to get that first (league win) out of the way.”
Cruse, a middle schooler who has still yet to taste defeat in a high school uniform, started the day off slow and never sped up all that much. Nearly everything she threw dropped out of the strike zone, and a good quarter of her plus-count offerings were so low that they rolled their way to Keira Anderson behind the plate.
But the Loggers never made the adjustment, despite coach Dave Teitzel’s prodding, reminding, and — at times — pleading with his team to sit back and wait for the ball to come to them. Cruse finished with eight strikeouts and allowed seven hits but stranded every runner she let reach.
“She heard what he was saying, and I think for a young kid it was pretty cool (too see) her feed off that,” Qualls said.
With the way Cruse was throwing, the Mountaineers only needed the bare minimum on offense, but even that much proved hard against Onalaska sophomore Lisa Liddell, who struck out 12 in nearly as good an outing. For a turn through the batting order, she matched Cruse slow stuff for slow stuff, then turned up the heat around the fourth inning and blew heat past the Mountaineers the rest of the way.
Before that could happen, the Mountaineers got creative to break the deadlock. Brooklynn Swenson led the top of the second off with a double. Two pitches into the next at-bat, she waited until the ball was on the way back to Liddell in the circle before breaking to take third base on a delayed steal. A batter later, she baited her way into a rundown off of third, then came home when the Loggers threw behind her without covering the plate.
“She’s messy like that,” Qualls said. “She has faith in her team, but at the same time, if she sees an opportunity, and she’s feeling a little risky, she’s going to go for it.”
Swenson, Olivia Earsley, and Alyssa Lofgren all had two-hit days for the Mountaineers.
Onalaska’s Jaelyn Auman smacked a triple to give the Loggers hope in the fourth inning, but was thrown out at the plate on a single to the outfield.
“They’re coming together, they’ll get it together,” Teitzel said. “We’ve got to be playing ball when it comes District time, that’s my thing.”
All of the runs showed up in the second, non-league contest, which Rainier — designated as the home team — won 21-20 in walk-off fashion. Both teams finished with 15 hits, and combined for 15 errors, and had four pitchers combine to throw 338 pitches.
Rainier is slated to host Morton-White Pass on Thursday, while Onalaska will go to Napavine.
