Mountlake Terrace baseball tops Meadowdale in district tournament

Published 9:15 pm Tuesday, May 5, 2026

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — For the first time all afternoon, Meadowdale baseball had life.

Mountlake Terrace starter Owen Meek had allowed just one hit through five innings in a District 1 3A loser-out game on Tuesday, and the bats gave him a 3-0 lead to protect entering the sixth. However, the home side ran into trouble defensively, as Meadowdale sophomore Vincent Pena reached first on a dropped third strike and a throw to first that barely pulled the infielder off the bag.

A fly ball from freshman Nash Echelbarger fell out of an outfielder’s glove to put runners on second and third, and Meek walked his first batter of the game, freshman Aaron Kibuta, to load the bases with one out. Mountlake Terrace coach Ryan Sells walked out to the mound. His message was simple.

“This is his game,” Sells said, relaying his message to Meek. “That’s exactly what I said. I didn’t want to talk about balls and strikes, right? (Just) competing. This guy’s been a dog all year, and I meant that in a good way. He’s been able to take the ball. He’s that senior leadership. He knows he’s going to the next level, but that hasn’t affected him.

“What I said was just, ‘Have fun, work with you and (catcher Xander Spence), and let’s go get out of this inning.’”

Faced with a dicey situation, the Puget Sound commit did not blink.

In the next at-bat, Meek induced a fielder’s choice groundout that allowed one run to score for Meadowdale but still got the second out with runners on the corners. He immediately followed that up with his seventh strikeout of the afternoon, making the potential go-ahead run whiff on a 2-2 count.

After allowing just his second hit of the day in the seventh, Meek retired the side to lead the No. 10 seed Hawks (10-12) to a 3-1 win against the No. 11 seed Mavericks (8-13). The senior finished with eight strikeouts and zero earned runs while also going 1-for-3 at the plate with an RBI.

To do all of that in a district playoff game, where does that rank among Meek’s career performances?

“It’s definitely top 10,” Meek said. “… I was just trying to attack them all day. I knew that they were a little late on the fastball, so I was just pounding that, and then just trying to get outs.”

Five different Mountlake Terrace batters recorded base hits, with senior Charlie Schofield and sophomore Will VanDeMark driving in the other two runs. Meanwhile, Meadowdale freshman Carson Bishop allowed five hits and one walk while striking out five in a competitive effort.

The Mavericks’ loss marks the end of senior Kealoha Kepo’o-Sabate’s high school career. The Texas Tech commit and potential MLB Draft prospect drove in Meadowdale’s lone run on a fielder’s choice with the bases loaded in the sixth, and while his departure marks a significant loss for the program, coach Darren Watkins is excited about the freshman class that gathered significant experience this year.

“We just didn’t hit in situations when we had guys in scoring position,” Watkins said. “So it’s plain and simple. We need to execute when that happens. … We’ve been working on our execution all the time, and like I said, we’re successful in practice, but we just cannot translate it to the games, and that’s how it’s been all year.”

It’s even more difficult against a pitcher like Meek, who was perfect through three innings. He allowed his first base-runner on a single from Echelbarger in the top of the fourth, but it was Schofield who provided the biggest pop in the first half of the game. The shortstop led off the bottom of the first with a home run to give the Hawks an immediate 1-0 lead.

Schofield quickly fell behind 0-2 with a strike looking and a foul ball. He kept his nerve and watched a pitch go by to bring it to 1-2. On the fourth pitch, Schofield saw a changeup left up and in, and he crushed it over the left field fence.

He pointed to the sky while rounding first, watching the ball hit the turf on the other side. After running into a sweeping ‘low-five’ with Sells while rounding third, Schofield got mobbed in front of the dugout. The immediate rush of adrenaline made it a home run sprint more than a traditional trot.

“I was pumped,” Schofield said. “That’s my first bomb. I was really trying to get the boys going, and I’m so hyped. Glad that we came out, got this win, set the tone and just played Terrace baseball.”

The Mavericks put their first runner in scoring position in the fourth, when Kibuta bunted Echelbarger over to second following his single. The freshman tagged up and reached third on a Kepo’o-Sabate flyout, but Meek dialed in for an inning-ending strikeout, getting the next batter to whiff on three straight pitches out of a 1-0 count.

Meek doubled the lead in the bottom of the frame, getting ahead 2-0 in the count and fouling one off before sending an RBI double to left field, which scored Spence from second after he got on via hit-by-pitch.

Meek came back with another 1-2-3 frame in the fifth, notching another strikeout, and VanDeMark padded the lead with an RBI single on a full count to score junior Owen Boswell from third base. VanDeMark stole second and reached third on a wild pitch to get in prime scoring position for another run, but Bishop induced a flyout on a full count to end the inning.

“We’ve been talking about that all year, being gritty with two strikes,” Sells said. “And I think that’s been our approach ever since like Game 8 (of the season), I want to say. We came out hitting the ball the first couple games, faced some adversity, but we just told them to grit down with two strikes, right? Expand the zone if we have to. Don’t let (the) umpire dictate what we do at the plate, but we were tough, man, mentally tough. We’ve really turned that switch.”

After Meek escaped the jam in the sixth with minimal damage, Bishop notched two strikeouts in a 1-2-3 frame to keep Meadowdale within reach, but Meek shut the door in the seventh.

After winning the 2024 District 1 3A Championship, Mountlake Terrace has finished in the middle of the pack in Wesco South 3A/2A in the two seasons since. The Hawks fell in the district quarterfinals last year, and despite finishing with a worse league record this season, they feel like they’re taking steps to build back to their historic standard.

The next step will take Mountlake Terrace to Sedro-Woolley on Thursday, where the No. 7 seed Cubs stand in the way of a potential quarterfinal matchup against No. 2 Snohomish, who the Hawks defeated 8-2 on April 17.

“We’ve seen what the people did before us in previous years, and we want to replicate and emulate that,” Schofield said. “We’re not worried about where we’re seeded or how we play. We’re just (thinking) one game at a time. Just win the next one.”