PE ELL — When there’s a zero in the loss column, the best shot is coming from the team on the opposite side.
No team has come close to handing the Adna Pirates their first loss this season except for the Pe Ell-Willapa Valley Titans. Ten days after the Pirates squeaked by PWV 1-0 at Adna, both offenses came alive in Pe Ell Thursday with Adna prevailing 10-7 in a non-league bout.
The visiting Pirates looked bound for their 10th double-digit win of the year as they pulled in front 10-2 in the sixth, but the scrappy Titans found a spark in the sixth inning to draw within three before Adna slammed the door in the seventh.
“Once you can get to this far in the season and you’re undefeated, everybody wants to give you that first loss. I told them, ‘If you let up, it can happen,’” Adna head coach Jake Overbay said. “When they gave up that big inning, they came in fired up.”
It took Adna five innings to tally the first run of the ballgame on April 14 against PWV, and it only took four at-bats to score on Thursday. Each of the first three Pirates batters reached safely, including Danner Hoinowski with a triple, and Owen Fagernes drove in his 25th run of the year on a sacrifice fly.
Following a Ty Bodenhamer first-pitch double, Cash Smith cashed in on the very next pitch with a two-run single to center, and he scored on a Bryce Pine single on the subsequent at-bat. Pirates starter Beau Miller was cooking on the bump early, striking out the first two hitters he faced.
Adna’s lead ballooned to seven runs in the second inning, with Fagernes and Smith each picking up another RBI on doubles. In the fourth inning, PWV’s Liam Smaciarz drilled his first home run of the season on a low pitch, plunking it just over the outstretched arm of Pine in center.
After a pair of unproductive innings, the Pirates offense struck for two more runs with two outs in the fifth, and while PWV cut it to 9-2 in the fifth, hits weren’t coming easy for the Titans against Miller.
Talan Guerrero secured the Pirates’ 10th run of the day, drilling a first-pitch single to reward Bodenhamer’s leadoff knock in the sixth. Titans pitcher Mauricio Morales pitched his team out of further damage with two runners in scoring position, closing the inning with a popout.
It took some time for PWV’s comeback efforts to commence in the bottom of the sixth against Aiden Percival, who surrendered back-to-back walks after striking out the leadoff hitter. Morales delivered an RBI single, and an outfield error allowed Eddie Clements to score to cut the margin to six. With two outs, Blane King, Brayden Russell, and Lucas Lusk went back-to-back-to-back with RBI singles, and suddenly, Adna’s lead shrunk to 10-7.
“We were more aggressive. We were swinging at good pitches, and I think we were just on time. Before, we weren’t. It was a big improvement,” PWV head coach Kent Smaciarz said.
Brody Aust, who led off the sixth with a leadoff strikeout, struck out to end the inning with runners on the corners.
With the game’s momentum teetering in PWV’s favor, the Pirates came up empty against Morales in the seventh, failing to put a runner in scoring position. In the bottom of the seventh, Smaciarz appeared to get the rally started until his line drive was caught by a leaping Luke Mohney at shortstop. Clements took four straight balls to earn a walk after swinging through the first two pitches, but Morales grounded into a double play to PWV’s comeback hopes.
“We tried to stick to the approach of driving fastballs and really getting after the first good pitch we see,” Overbay said. “But I was talking to them at the end about a little bit of complacency and getting flat toward the end. Those are the games that you can let teams back in it just by thinking it’s already over. It was a good learning lesson, and fortunately, it worked out for us.”
Adna (15-0, 12-0 Central 2B League) will have a quick turnaround as it travels to Napavine (13-3, 11-1 C2BL) Friday. PWV (7-5, 4-2 Pacific 2B League) hosts Onalaska (5-9, 5-7 C2BL) on Saturday.
