It took the No. 2 Tumwater baseball team exactly three innings to get up to speed at Wheeler Field on Saturday, and once it did, there was little either No. 15 Grandview or No. 10 Archbishop Murphy could do to stop it as the Thunderbirds came back to beat the Greyhounds 8-2 before rolling the Wildcats 11-0 in five innings.
Now, the defending 2A state champs are headed back to the Final Four.
“We definitely kept the energy going,” senior Alex Overbay. “We all have the same goal, and that’s to win a state championship. This is just one step closer.”
Overbay led the effort from the front, earning both wins by going a combined 7 ⅔ innings, giving up just two hits and striking 10. At the plate, he finished the day 3 for 6 with three doubles, a walk, and three RBIs.
“He’s the league MVP for a reason,” Tumwater coach Lyle Overbay said. “That’s why. He can do those things.”
But the day started out roughly, as Grandview tagged Game 1 starter Trenton Overbay for two runs before he planted badly on a pitch and had to leave in the second inning with an injury. On the other side of things, Grandview starter Carlos Guillen whiffed T-Bird after T-Bird the first time through the order, and after three innings, the Greyhounds had a major upset on their minds.
Ayden Ramsey gave the Thunderbirds eight huge outs in middle relief on short notice. But in the fifth — after Tumwater finally got a run across to make it 2-1 — he ran into trouble. Lyle Overbay had wanted to save his son for the second game, but with two in scoring position and just one out, the Thunderbirds were close to not having a second game.
So father made the bullpen call to son, and Alex — who started the gave with his throwing hand heavily taped after getting stepped on in the district title game last week — shed his bandages and went to work.
“We had talked about it before, that bad things are going to happen,” Alex Overbay said. “You’ve just got to be ready to step up.”
Two groundouts got the T-Birds back into the dugout, and finally, the bats got to work. Kyler Collier drew a free pass to lead the bottom of the fifth off, and Briar Finney singled. Landon Roy broke the ice with a two-run double that put Tumwater ahead, and Derek Thompson followed that with an RBI triple to make it 4-2.
“That was big,” Lyle Overbay said. “They were pressing a bit at the beginning, and I think they just started relaxing, like, ‘Ok, we are a good team, let’s put some good at-bats together and put some pressure on them.’ And that’s what we did.”
Once the wheels got moving, Grandview couldn’t stop them. Two more runs scored in the frame on a pair of errors, and Tumwater added another in the sixth, while Overbay retired six of the final seven batters he faced.
Then it was a 45-minute break before a date with Archbishop Murphy, which had upset No. 7 Mark Morris in the first round. But despite the brief time off the field, the T-Birds started their sequel already in the right gear, plating two runs in the first inning and never looking back.
Tumwater finished its day by scoring runs in six of its final seven trips to the plate, including four crooked numbers.
Eddie Marson added a 3-for-3 line in Game 2, while Collier went 2 for 3 with a triple and two RBIs.
The offense stayed hot enough that the T-Birds shortened the game to five innings, meaning Alex Overbay — who had thrown 30 pitches in the game against Grandview — managed to keep his pitch count low enough to throw a shortened complete game.
After the final out and the handshake line, the T-Birds tried to hit Lyle Overbay with the gatorade bath, but the MLB veteran wouldn’t let them have that pleasure just yet.
“We haven’t done nothing yet,” he said.
Instead, they got the other Overbay on the field, doing their best to douse Alex.
Now, Tumwater will head to Bellingham for the state semifinals, where they’ll face W.F. West for the second straight year in an all-EvCo showdown. The Thunderbirds swept the regular-season series against the Bearcats, but W.F. West got back with a win on a bigger stage, taking the district title over Tumwater.
This next one will outweigh all of the previous four.
“We want them all. It got personal last time at the district championship,” Alex Overbay said. “We’re going to take it to them.”
