NAPAVINE — The Napavine Tigers’ thorn in their side throughout the 2025 season has oddly been the team that they easily disposed of in the 2B District 4 first round last year.
While Rainier went 0-3 against Napavine this spring, the Tigers collectively grew some gray hairs in order to earn those three wins. No matchup against their Central 2B League foes was more laborious for the Tigers than Saturday afternoon’s district first round contest.
Napavine exploded out of the gates with two runs in the first and eight in the second, but the Mountaineers scrapped back from a 10-1 deficit and brought the tying run to second base in the seventh before the Tigers slammed the door to win 10-9 and advance to Tuesday’s semifinals against Ilwaco.
“We just didn’t handle adversity very well,” Napavine head coach Brian Demarest said. “They stopped playing the ball that we normally play. You don’t want to play these teams too many times because, sooner or later, you’re gonna run out of luck. But we held on, so we’ll take it.”
Rainier, fresh off a win over Forks earlier Saturday for its district win in six years, loaded the bases in the first inning against Napavine ace Cal Bullock, but the junior struck out Kaymen Larman to elude any damage.
Bullock provided himself with some run support in the bottom of the first, scoring Beckett Landram on an RBI single. Jack Nelson roped the first pitch he saw for the second run of the frame as Bullock came around to score.
Rainier got a run back in the second thanks to Yazama Gurnsey’s RBI groundout, but the Mountaineers fell apart in the bottom of the second with Hunter Howell on the mound. The first 10 Tigers reached base safely; Gurnsey replaced Howell after the first seven which plated seven runs, and Napavine tacked on three more before the Mountaineers could get the third out.
But, slowly, the Mountaineers chipped away at the lead. Dayton Gardner and Blake Fennel combined for a three-run third, and a pair of wild pitches scored two more in the fourth to make it 10-6 Napavine.
Peyton Sheaffer drove in two on a single to center in the sixth, and Gardner followed him by picking up his fourth RBI of the day with a single to cut the deficit to just a run. Guernsey pitched the Mountaineers back into the game, allowing just four hits and two runs over five innings and retiring a dozen in a row.
In the seventh against Hudson Chambers, Fennel was abandoned at second after his leadoff single as Chambers retired the final three batters, ending Rainier’s miraculous comeback attempt.
“I’m really proud because it’s the attitude that we need to have. You just can’t quit. You find a way to just keep chipping,” Rainier head coach Justin Gurnsey said. “We could have folded early with our tails between our legs, but we just kept clawing away.”
Second seed Napavine (16-5, 13-3 C2BL) moves on to the district semifinals for the second straight year and will face P2BL top seed Ilwaco on Tuesday at Napavine for a chance to punch its ticket to state and the district title game. In order to do so, Demarest says Layton Griffith will have to succeed on the bump and the Tigers must avoid complacency.
“We’re just gonna have to be better at handling things when they get tough. We can’t come out and play really good for a couple innings and get a big lead and then stop doing what got us there,” he said. “They’ll be ready to go come Tuesday.”
Sixth seed Rainier (9-11, 7-9 C2BL) moves to the consolation bracket to face fourth seed Toutle Lake on Tuesday at Adna.
