PREP SOFTBALL: Late rally beats Everett in semifinal

Published 10:27 pm Saturday, May 24, 2008

TACOMA — Cory Mattson picked a bad time to give up her first runs of the 3A state softball tournament.

Everett High School was three outs away from knocking off unbeaten defending state champion Kennedy on Saturday morning when Lindsay Dugan hit a two-run home run to break up Mattson’s one-hit shutout in the top of the seventh inning.

The shot gave Kennedy a 2-1 lead and sparked a four-run inning that would effectively end Everett’s hopes of an upset — not to mention a trip to the state championship game.

“I might be thinking about that one for a while,” Mattson said after the Seagulls’ 4-2 loss in a state semifinal game. “Maybe not so down-the-middle next time.”

While Everett went on to take third place, it was the morning game that would create the most vivid image of a memorable season.

“That was painful,” Everett coach Kyle Peacocke said a few minutes after the semifinal loss. “We were three outs away from getting a shot at the title.

“When it came off (Dugan’s) bat, I knew it was a homer. But it was still painful.”

In a battle of top pitchers — neither Mattson nor Kennedy’s Karli Merlich gave up a single run in Friday’s opening rounds — the Seagulls struck early with a run in the bottom of the first inning. Abby Pappas’s two-out, RBI single gave Everett a 1-0 lead, and Mattson took over from there.

She yielded just one run through the first six innings, striking out 10 along the way. But Merlich led off the seventh with a towering shot to left-centerfield, resulting in a double.

Dugan stepped up next, drawing three consecutive balls before Mattson threw a strike down the middle of the plate. Mattson’s next pitch was supposed to be a curve ball, but the pitch never bent. Dugan crushed it over the centerfield fence to end Mattson’s scoreless streak after 20 innings of tournament play.

“I’m not used to playing with a fence, so I was just trying to make good contact,” Dugan said. “It feels good. There’s no feeling like it.”

Dugan played the part of a likeable hero. She has a condition called alopecia, an auto-immune disorder that caused her to start losing all of her body hair at the age of 9. Dugan said she felt like such an outsider at Kentwood High School that she decided to transfer to Kennedy before her senior year.

“I was looking for a smaller environment,” she said.

Dugan wasn’t the only Kennedy batter to get to Mattson in the seventh inning of Saturday’s semifinal. After her go-ahead homer, the Lancers added three more hits and took advantage of an Everett error to expand their lead to 4-1.

Mattson admitted that she was “a little tired” in the seventh, but her coach gave all the credit to Kennedy.

“The seventh inning was their inning,” Peacocke said after the Lancers got almost as many hits in one inning (five) as Mattson had allowed in the previous 20 (six). “… After (Merlich’s leadoff double), they had a little bit of momentum. And we had a little bit of: ‘This sucks.’”

Asked for the Lancers’ secret in the seventh, Kennedy’s Merlich: “We were laying off the high stuff.”

The impervious Mattson was disappointed but not crushed afterward.

“It was pretty tough,” she said of the seventh inning. “They started hitting the ball, and there was nothing we could do.”

Everett still had its chances in the bottom of the seventh. Chialah Forman led off with a double, then Anna Hudson walked to put two runners on with no one out and Friday heroes Valerie Stahl and Alexandra Hudson coming to the plate. Both players had homered in a quarterfinal win the previous day, but they each struck out in Saturday’s seventh.

Mattson reached on an error that scored a run before Merlich recorded her 15th, and final, strikeout to end the game.

Mattson pitched another shutout, her third in four games, in the consolation round Saturday afternoon. Everett beat Southridge 1-0 to earn a spot in the third-place game. The Seagulls then stopped Bonney Lake 2-0 to take home the third-place trophy.

4A tournament

Monroe was the only remaining local team heading into Saturday play. But the Bearcats bowed out after an exciting, eight-inning game against Wilson of Tacoma. Wilson beat Monroe 6-4 to end the Bearcats’ season.

For the second day in a row, Wilson’s Anthea Aasen knocked out a Snohomish County team when she drove in a pair of runs with a single in the top of the eighth.

Aasen, who beat Marysville-Pilchuck with the game-winning hit Friday night, tied Saturday morning’s game 1-1 in the seventh before teammate Courtney Cabrera cleared the bases with a double for a 4-1 lead.

Monroe rallied in the bottom of the seventh, tying the score on Tessa Degel’s two-RBI double.

But Aasen struck again in the top of the eighth, doubling with runners on first and second.