Well, this is new.
There are three days left in the 2A EvCo softball season, and anybody who tells you they know what’s going to happen is outright lying.
Four of the seven teams in the league have two games left, Shelton and Black Hills have three, and Aberdeen has one. The league gets four bids to the 2A District 4 tournament.
We know that the Highclimbers and Wolves are out of the postseason running, and the Bobcats have clinched a spot. That’s it. Three spots left to be claimed, every seed up for grabs, and of course, a league title to be taken.
Think about it. There are 48 hours left in the regular season — just seven total games remaining — and we still know basically nothing about how it’s going to end.
This is new. Don’t believe me? Ask the coaches who are trying to navigate teams through all of this.
“It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” Rochester skipper Joni Lancaster said. “I think we have one of the craziest leagues in the state, by far. Everybody else is climbing talent-wise, and I think we’re all kind of similar in aspect.”
“You just never know,” W.F. West coach Kevin Zylstra added.
Usually in these parts, the Central 2B League is where the best, most down-to-the-wire endings come from — the league is a meat-grinder, after all. But much of the time, those races are for second behind a top team far ahead of everyone else (hello, Napavine football and Adna softball), or a final sprint for first between two schools (looking at you this past year, Napavine and Adna girls basketball), or even between a few of them (see: MWP, Napavine, and Adna boys basketball).
And in all of those cases, there’s an equally large group of stragglers at the bottom; it’s a true league of haves and have-nots, though who goes in which category varies by sport and changes year-to-year.
That’s been the way the 2A EvCo traditionally is as well; generally with five schools looking up at Tumwater and W.F. West, though the occasional Rochester softball, Black Hills boys basketball, or Aberdeen boys soccer will get into the mix — or even win it all. The football season pretty much came down to the Bearcats vs. the T-Birds at Sid Otton Field, the girls basketball league season — and district tournament — followed that pattern as well, and baseball after that.
And softball was no exception. Look at last year: Tumwater (the eventual State champs) and W.F. West beating up on everyone else, Rochester just over .500, Aberdeen at .500, Centralia just below .500, and Shelton and Black Hills in the cellar.
This year? Chaos.
Rochester starts its league season 2-0, then proceeds to drop five straight. Aberdeen bounces back from a loss to the Warriors to hand Tumwater its first league defeat to someone other than W.F. West in nearly two years. The Bearcats beat the T-Birds in a continuation of their epic series last year, then lose to Centralia for the first time since 2011.
Speaking of Centralia, the Tigers started their EvCo run with three wins in three days, after winning just two league games before the calendar turned to May in 2022.
And every time we expected things to revert back to a two- or three-team race, it just… didn’t. W.F. West seemed to have things back in order before Black Hills — which hadn’t won a league game in seven years before beating Shelton in April — springs out of nowhere and handles the Bearcats 7-0. That makes the league Tumwater’s to lose… for all of 48 hours, before Rochester comes out and scores nine runs on Ella Ferguson, who’d allowed just seven in her previous 40 innings.
Black Hills, meanwhile, can’t turn the W.F. West win into momentum and loses to Aberdeen and Centralia. The Wolves are eliminated, but still can mess things up in a big way for Rochester and Tumwater in the next few days. Just ask the Bearcats what Zoey Theophilus and the Wolves can do.
Oh, and Rochester’s suddenly the hottest team in the state apparently. The Warriors followed that win over Tumwater with a 12-7 beating of W.F. West, and are hitting their stride late — though Warriors fans will hope not too late.
In every other league, in every other spot this year, we’ve gotten excited for games because we know what could happen. In 2A softball this year, we get excited for games because we have absolutely no clue what could happen, because at this point, nothing’s a surprise.
“On any given day, it can be anybody’s game,” Lancaster said.
Soon, four teams — some combination of W.F. West, Tumwater, Aberdeen, Rochester, and Centralia — will get outside the league bubble and take on five new faces from the GSHL. Part of the intrigue of not knowing anything about where teams stand in comparison to each other is that we don’t really know how the stand in comparison to anyone else.
We don’t know. We just don’t know. Two days from now, we’ll know a fair bit more, and more after that once the district tournament starts. But for now, just ride the chaos, and don’t you dare make any assumptions about how any of the seven games will go.
It’s definitely new. And a lot of fun.
