Reagan Ryan’s career day carries Stanwood softball past Everett

EVERETT — As soon as the ball left her bat and soared to left field, Reagan Ryan figured she would have a chance to get all the way around the diamond.

The Stanwood senior already had an RBI triple and a run scored in the previous inning to jump ahead 2-0 against Everett at Lincoln Field on Monday, but this time she was able to get 60 feet further. The ball rolled deep into the left field corner as senior Rubi Lopez (1-for-2, 2 R) and sophomore Jemma Lopez (1-for-3, 2 R) easily made it home from second and third. Ryan hustled to join them, beating the throw home to make it 5-0 with a three-run, inside-the-park home run in the fourth inning.

It highlighted a career day for Ryan (3-for-3, HR, 3B, 5 RBI, 3 R), who came up a double short of hitting for the cycle. She reached base in all four plate appearances, while driving in or scoring eight runs total for the Spartans (11-1 overall, 3-0 league) in an 11-1 win against the Seagulls (6-6, 2-2), which ended after five innings via the run rule.

“I’ve never really done that,” Ryan said about her stat line. “It was really fun. … I just showed up really wanting to win and really locked in. I didn’t let any outside noises kind of get me out of my zone. I just stayed really locked in on, like, what my pitch was and what I wanted to hit, basically.”

On the other side of her stellar offensive outing was sophomore pitcher Addi Anderson, who struck out 10 across all five innings, allowing just three hits and no earned runs. Before Stanwood’s offense exploded, Anderson escaped a no-outs, bases-loaded jam in the second inning by retiring the next three batters — two by strikeout — to keep it 0-0.

From there, it was smooth sailing in the circle.

“Honestly, just knowing that I had my team to back me up,” Anderson said about her successful outing. “I wasn’t really worried if they got a hit because I knew whoever it got hit to could easily make a play or get it in quickly, and just not fumble and just have my back.”

In the top of the third, Anderson (0-for-3) worked a walk after Ryan’s RBI triple. The Seagulls caught her stealing second, but Ryan scored from third after the throw from Everett catcher Madeline Pewitt (1-for-3), making it 2-0 entering the bottom of the third.

After Ryan’s inside-the-park home run in the fourth, a series of errors, wild pitches and passed balls from the Seagulls set Stanwood up with runners on second and third, and senior outfielder Shayla Calkins (1-for-4, 2 RBI) hit a 2-RBI single to left field to make it 7-0.

The Spartans scored two more runs off an error in the fourth before Ryan drove in another run in the fifth inning with an RBI single to shallow center field. She scored from third on a wild pitch a couple of at-bats later to make it 11-0.

“(Ryan) was just locked in,” Stanwood assistant coach Joel Almanza said. “She’s a senior, she’s one of our leaders, and she was locked in. She’s our three-hitter. It’s what we expect out of her. It’s not a pressure situation, and that’s how she trains. When you train as hard as she does, and you know, the rest of our players, then we get the results.”

Anderson’s shutout was sullied by an error in center field, which allowed sophomore infielder/pitcher Mia Hoekendorf (1-for-3, SB, R; 1.1 IP, 2 H, 3 BB, 2 K, 2 ER) to score Everett’s lone run in the bottom of the fifth, but Anderson followed it up by punching out her 10th batter to end the game in five innings.

In the postgame huddle surrounded by her teammates, Ryan acknowledged how nervous she was going into the game, in part due to the implications in the standings. The win gave Stanwood some extra breathing room in Wesco North 3A/2A, whereas a loss would have dropped them down to third behind Everett and Monroe (8-5, 3-1).

Turns out, all Ryan was nervous for was the game of her life.

“All day I was thinking about it and really nervous about it,” Ryan said. “But I was just really happy that I didn’t let my nerves get ahead of me, and that we just played our game really well.”