Lady Cruisers Are EvCo League Champs
The Eatonville Lady Cruiser fastpitch team survived the test of the very competitive 1A Evergreen Conference to come away with the league title.
After clinching the title a few weeks ago, the Cruisers would play a rained-out make-up game against Tenino before finishing off the week with a few non-league match-ups against a couple of powerhouse teams.
On Monday, May 9th Eatonville would host the Tenino Beavers in the final game of their 3-game series and would come away with a 10-0 win in a mercy-rule shortened five-inning game to sweep the series.
Hailey Rath would lead the Cruisers at the plate going 4-4 with two doubles, a stolen base, and four runs scored. Brooke Blocker would smash a home run and go 2-2 at the plate with four runs batted in, a walk, and two runs scored.
After that win on Monday, the Cruisers would head to Pe Ell, WA to take on the #1 team in the 2B classification, Pe Ell-Willapa Valley High School.
After trailing 6-5 in the final inning, Eatonville’s Hailey Rath would get on base after crushing a pitch back up the middle into center field. Dakota Rath would follow that up with a line-drive single to right to score Rath and tie up the game at 6-6.
After holding their opponent scoreless in the bottom of the 7th, they would go to extra innings where the Cruisers would do some serious damage.
Dakota Smith would hit her second home run of the game and help the Cruisers score five runs in the inning to take an 11-6 lead into the bottom half of the inning.
PWV would load the bases before Lauren Matlock stepped to the plate and would take a 1-1 pitch deep for a grand slam scoring four and pulling within one at 11-10.
With two outs in the inning, pitcher Sara Smith would get Olivia Matlock to ground out to second baseman Charlie Smith to seal the win for the Cruisers.
Eatonville would hit four home runs on the day, with Dakota Smith hitting two of them and Hailey Rath and Berkeley Porter would hit one each.
Eatonville's Berkeley Porter, Dakota Smith, and Hailey Rath show off the home run balls they hit against Pe Ell-Willapa Valley on Wednesday. Photo: Sarah Rath
With Rath’s 16th home run of the season, she would break her school record of 15 she hit last season. Also, the four home runs by the team would break the single-season team record for home runs which stood at 43 which was set last season as well in the COVID-shortened 2021 season.
The Lady Cruisers would finish off the season by heading to Auburn, WA to take on the class 3A Auburn-Riverside Ravens in another non-league affair.
Eatonville would jump on the Ravens early scoring in each of the first three innings to eventually clinch a 10-5 victory.
Hailey Rath and Brooke Blocker would lead the Cruisers with 3 hits each. Dakota Smith would homer in the game to give her nine on the season.
The Cruisers will finish up the regular season making up a couple of rainouts against Montesano and Hoquiam. They will play both teams in a doubleheader on Monday, May 16th with the Montesano game starting at 3:00 pm and the Hoquiam game starting at approximately 5:00 pm. Both games will be played at Montesano HS. Due to having to cancel these two home games, Senior Day will now take place on Tuesday at 5:00 pm following their practice.
Following those two games on Monday, the Lady Cruisers will enter into the 2022 Southwestern Washington District IV tournament. After clinching the league title, the Cruisers are awarded the #1 seed into the district playoffs which start on Wednesday, May 18th. The Cruisers will take on the #4 seeded team from the TriCo, the La Center Wildcats. The game will take place at Fort Borst Park in Centralia, WA. The game will start at 12:00 pm. The winner of that game will move on to play at 4:00 pm that same day against the winner of the Montesano/Columbia-White Salmon game.
