Pirates Fall to Jaguars in State Championship

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YAKIMA — Some things would just be a little bit too perfect, too storybook.

The day after it took down the giants of its area, the Adna baseball team had its return to the state title game first delayed, then moved to a different county. And the Pirates — the No. 11 team in the 12-team field, who had to battle through two games on the first day of the tournament to even make it east — went up yet again against a higher seed, with a crowd that had come to Yakima to watch the softball team win a state crown stay to see if the boys could pull it off as well.

But some things just aren’t meant to be, and after a seven-inning thriller, No. 4 Tri-Cities Prep came out champions with a walk-off 5-4 win.

“What a game, what a day, what a team,” Adna coach Thad Nelson said. “I’ll tell you what, they competed. They played with their hearts, they played for each other. Just a special, special group.”

The Pirates were supposed to face the Jaguars in Ephrata at 7 p.m., but thunderstorms nixed that idea just as they were getting ready to gear up. At 6:43 p.mThe WIAA announced the game was being moved to Yakima Valley College’s Parker Faller Field — with a new start time of 9 p.m.

“We faced adversity all year,” Nelson said. “That wasn’t new. You can only control what you can control, and we couldn’t control that. “

So after five other baseball titles had been won, after softball and soccer and tennis champions had been crowned and hundreds of track and field athletes had come home with titles, Adna and TCP found themselves on a new field, in front of a sparse crowd, as the only game left in the 2022-23 school year.

Adna jumped out to a lead right out of the gate, plating two runs in the top of the first inning on a Tristan Percival RBI single and a sacrifice fly. TCP came back win a run in its first trip to the plate, though, and an inning later took a 3-2 lead.

That started a back-and-forth spell in the middle innings with four straight run-scoring frames, with the teams coming out of the fifth level at 4-4.

With ace Tristan Percival unavailable due to pitch count, the Pirates turned to senior Asher Guerrero, who ground his way through four innings, striking out four.

“He went out and just battled and competed,” Nelson said.

With the bases loaded and two down in a tie game in the fifth, Nelson turned from his senior to a freshman, and Cameron Nakano delivered, stranding all three runners with a groundout.

Pitching on the biggest stage of his young career yet, Nakano went on to shut the Jaguars down in the sixth.

“That kid is a competitor, and I’ll tell you, he likes the limelight,” Nelson said. “He likes that pressure situation.”

In the bottom of the seventh, though, an error put a runner on base. With one on and two down, the Pirates elected to walk slugger Caleb Sherfey, who was 2 for 2 with a pair of doubles and three RBIs. That put a runner in scoring position, and TCP took advantage, singling home the run from second to win the title.

Guerrero went 3 for 4 with an RBI to lead the Pirates, while Danner Hoinowski went 2 for 4.

The second-place finish is the best for Adna since 2015.

“I can’t say enough about the senior leadership and how they play for each other,” Nelson said. “Not the outcome that we wanted, obviously, but I can tell you that they competed and left it out on the field. I can’t be more proud of those boys.”