Vikings show their mettle

Published 10:00 pm Wednesday, March 23, 2011

SHORELINE — After suffering a tough defeat at the hands of one of its Wesco North rivals the previous day, Lake Stevens bounced back with a confidence-building 8-6 defeat of Wesco South power Shorewood in a nonleague baseball game Wednesday.

Matt Sweeney hit a score-tying, two-run single in the top of the sixth inning with two outs. An inning later, teammate Keanu Puha’s grounder up the middle forced Shorewood second baseman Jeremy Edwards to range to his right. Edwards’ ensuing throw to first was low, resulting in an error and allowing the eventual winning runs to score.

Edwards made an outstanding clutch play earlier in the inning. With no outs and the potential go-ahead run on third, he gloved a groundball up the middle and made a strong throw home to nail the runner.

Facing one of the best pitchers in all of Wesco in Shorewood’s Blake Snell, the Vikings (2-2 overall) got to the left-hander in the second inning. After a leadoff walk and a couple wild pitches, Jacob Nelson and Anthony Blackie followed with back-to-back, one-out RBI singles and Puha added an RBI double as Lake Stevens opened up a 4-0 lead.

However, the Vikings pulled their starter, Brandon Fiske, in the bottom half of the second due to control problems.

Shorewood (2-2) batted around, scoring six runs on four hits and three walks. The big hit in the inning came off the bat of Thunderbirds first baseman Trevor Mitsui, who slugged an RBI double to center.

Eventually, Lake Stevens turned to relief pitcher Anthony Blackie.

“Anthony showed a lot of compusure,” Lake Stevens assistant coach Michael Hodgins said. “When things were tough, he kinda beared down and bowed his neck, and they say in the NFL big time players make big time plays in big time games. In baseball, you make pitches. If you’re a pitcher you make the pitch you need to and he did. He made some quality pitches.”

Blackie struggled with his command at times, walking six batters over the course of his 31/3 innings, yet the reliever didn’t yield a run or a hit.

One of the bigger moments for Blackie came in the bottom of the sixth. His team had just tied the score at 6-6 after Sweeney’s single. After setting down the first two Shorewood batters in order, Blackie walked Mitsui and then threw four straight balls to Henry McAree to put the go-ahead runs on base. A wild pitch moved both runners up a bag, but he struck out Connor McKeever.

“I thought he pitched great,” Vikings head coach Rodger Anderson said. “He’s just really worked hard on every aspect of his game.”

“We had a couple of instances today where guys really came through, sucked it up, especially after as bad as we played yesterday. To come out and refocus today, that’s what I’m most proud of.”