The championship game of the Brian Cox Memorial Tournament started with more fireworks than it ended with, when the home plate umpire heard one too many chirps from the dugout for his liking during the first at-bat of the contest, and promptly took his mask off and left the premises.
Once a replacement strike-caller had been brought in, though, the game turned out to be more of the same for I-5 Toyota Mountain Dew, which capped off a dominant run at its home tournament with an 8-3 win over Lower Columbia Baseball Club’s Single-A team Sunday with relatively little stress and little fanfare.
“I think our expectation was to win the tournament,” coach Bryan Bullock said. “The kids have a pretty high standard for themselves, so it wasn’t a surprise for them today.”
Punching up for much of the start of the summer against higher-level American Legion sides, Bullock said most of his side’s challenges have been self-inflicted, particularly on the mound. The weekend split between Chehalis and Napavine thus became a sort of get-right time for the I-5 Toyota pitchers, who responded with 15 straight scoreless frames to start and finished with just seven earned runs allowed in five games.
Things started Friday with a 15-0 shutout over Centralia, with Napavine’s Ashton Demarest and Cal Bullock teaming up with W.F. West’s Connor Coleman to put up five zeroes. Saturday, Centralia’s Brady Sprague threw a five-inning, two-hit shutout in a 13-0 win over LCBC, before Weston Potter (W.F. West), Alex Stafford (W.F. West), and Conner Holmes (Napavine) combined to strike out 11 in a 15-0 shutout of Tenino.
Sunday started with a 14-5 win over Centralia, where Miles Martin (W.F. West) threw three innings and Demarest and Tate Quarnstrom (Rochester) sealed the deal.
But the best outing on the mound was saved for last. Coleman’s outing started out with three straight close pitches all called balls, which led to the aforementioned complaints and self-ejection by the umpire, leaving the Bearcat sophomore sitting on a 3-0 count for the better part of 30 minutes.
Once he finally got back to action, he immediately dialed in and never left the zone, going six strong innings, striking out 10, and allowing just a pair of infield singles.
“It was really good to see him (do that),” Bullock said. “We know he’s got the stuff, and he was really on early in the game. He battled through a little adversity here and there, and gave us six quality innings.”
Holmes went 2 for 4 with two RBIs at the top of the I-5 Toyota lineup, while Stafford had two hits of his own. Those two both went 2 for 3 in the semifinal against Centralia, and both finished the weekend with eight hits to share the team lead for the weekend.
As a unit, the Dewers combined for 47 hits in 27 innings of play.
“Offensively, we’re trying to be aggressive at the plate,” Bullock said. “We’ve been a little passive seeing some good pitching, but I think this weekend we did a good job.”
I-5 Toyota is set to go back up to AAA competition Tuesday when it faces LCBC’s American Legion squad in Longview. After that, it’ll head to Selah for the Brent Edwards Tournament this weekend.
