By Aaron Swaney
Herald Writer
MARYSVILLE – For Snohomish’s Trevor Johnson, scoring the game-winning run in Thursday night’s game was all about positive thinking.
Johnson raced home on a sacrifice fly by Derek Bennion and slid head first past the tag of Mountlake Terrace catcher Joe Ness to score the game-deciding run in Snohomish’s 4-3 win over the Hawks Thursday in a Class 4A Western Conference loser-out Northwest District playoff game.
“I knew I was going to make it,” said Johnson in reference to his late game sprint for home. “There was no way they were going to get me.”
Johnson’s run capped off a late-inning comeback by Snohomish in which the Panthers came from three runs down in the last two innings to win.
Trailing 3-1 going into the sixth inning, Snohomish’s Peter Moormeier led off with a double down the left-field line. After two fly outs to center and a walk, Jake Vibbert stepped up and singled in Moormeier to give Snohomish life.
In the top of the seventh inning, Stephen Sperry led off with a single of his own. Next up, Johnson dragged a perfect bunt down the first base line where Mountlake Terrace starting pitcher Matt Hornecker picked it up and preceded to throw it over the first baseman’s head to advance Sperry to third.
With runners on second and third, Tyler Christensen shot a ground ball to the right side of the infield to score Sperry and put Johnson on third and in position to score the game-winning run.
The battling spirit the Panthers showed in their comeback was wrought from a seed planted earlier in the season.
“These kids faced a little slump earlier in the season and all the coaches talked about overcoming adversity and they learned how to come from behind,” said Snohomish assistant coach Mark Doidge. “They’re a tremendously tight knit group. They have barbeques before every game and they care about each other.”
Because of Thursday’s win the Snohomish players can fire up that grill one more time. The menu may be altered, though, because of an early 11 a.m. start to their game with Edmonds-Woodway Saturday at Everett Memorial Stadium. The game will be a loser-out contest with the winner advancing to a winner-to-state, loser-out game against the Mount Vernon-Shorewood winner.
With the loss Mountlake Terrace is eliminated from the playoffs.
Another key aspect of the Panthers’ win was starting pitcher Josh Roberts. Roberts struck out 11 Mountlake Terrace batters and, besides a little hiccup in the fifth inning, threw six innings of shutout baseball.
“Josh showed a lot of passion and heart out there tonight,” said Droidge.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Mountlake Terrace scored three runs on two hits and two Snohomish errors. A double by Aaron Heuer scored one run and a RBI single by Marc Joehnk scored another. A wild pitch later and the Hawks held a 3-1 lead going into the sixth inning.
In the first game Thursday, Mount Vernon needed some late game heroics of its own to end a losing skid and keep its own playoff hopes alive.
Star pitcher Kyle Kendrick knocked in the game-winning run to lead the Bulldogs to a 4-3 win over Marysville-Pilchuck to advance to the next round of the district playoffs. Mount Vernon will face Shorewood at 11 a.m. Saturday at Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
The Tomahawks were eliminated from the playoffs.
Mount Vernon jumped out to an early 3-0 after a three run third inning ignited by a lead-off home run by Jared Gilpatrick. But, Marysville-Pilchuck chipped away with two runs of its own in the top of the fifth inning and then tied the score in the seventh when Dan Liang popped a home run over the centerfield fence.
In the bottom of the seventh, after forcing the first two Bulldog batters out, C.J. Freeman surrendered a triple to Curt Rindal to set up Kendrick’s game-winning RBI.
Roberts and Jackson. Hornecker and Ness. WP-Roberts. LP-Hornecker. 2B-Moormeir (S), Heuer (M). Records-Snohomish 16-6 overall. Mountlake Terrace 15-6.
| MP |
000 |
020 |
1 |
– |
3 |
5 |
0 |
| MV |
003 |
000 |
1 |
– |
4 |
6 |
2 |
Verbone, Freeman (6) and Neyens. Kendrick and Sebury. WP-Kendrick. LP-Freeman. 2B-Freeman (MP), Benton (MP). 3B-Rindal (MV). HR-Gilpatrick (MV), Liang (MP). Records-MP 10-10 overall. MV 20-2.
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