One thing I’ve discovered since I began posting these polls a couple years ago is that we have a very loyal and active reader base in the Smokey Point area which, if I may speak for the paper, we at The Herald greatly appreciate and are thankful for.
One of the results of that loyalty is that when I conduct high school polls like this week’s, Lakewood tends to perform very well.
Indeed, this week’s Seattle Sidelines poll asked readers to weigh in on this weekend’s high school state spring team sports championships, and Lakewood was at it again. There are 10 Snohomish County high school teams playing for state titles this weekend, and I asked readers which team they thought was the likeliest to bring home a championship. Here’s how you voted in the rare Twitterless poll:
So with nearly 29 percent of the vote, the Lakewood softball team received more than 50 percent more votes than the next-best team, which was the Jackson softball team. So the voters like the Cougars’ chances at winning the 2A state title, much like they did last year.
While the voters stumped for Lakewood, if I had voted I probably would have gone for one of three options: Jackson softball or boys soccer, or Archbishop Murphy baseball (the teams that finished second through fourth in the voting). The reasoning for that is thus. Jackson softball is the defending 4A state champion, and the Timberwolves have their star pitcher Iyanla De Jesus back, so that’s a strong set of circumstances. As for Jackson boys soccer and Archbishop Murphy, picking those would be an exercise in pure math, as they only need to win two games to win their state championships, while the softball teams all need to win four straight to claim a title.
If there were teams I thought were surprisingly low in vote totals, it would be the Meadowdale and Snohomish softball teams. These two schools both won state titles in 2016, Snohomish at 4A and Meadowdale at 3A. Snohomish was the 3A state runner up last year, and Meadowdale has won its past 17 games. These two schools have tradition and have had excellent seasons, so I’m not counting either out.
The softball, baseball and boys soccer tournament get started Friday.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize the Kamiak boys golf team for winning the 4A state title. I deliberately limited the poll to true team sports, but that doesn’t diminish the Knights’ accomplishment, so congratulations to Daniel Kim, Josh Clogston and company.
