MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — What started out as a warm, sunny afternoon and a large lead for Mountlake Terrace soon turned into a chilling nailbiter.
As the temperature decreased late in the game, so did the Hawks’ lead against Edmonds-Woodway. So when senior Hannah Wilcox stepped to the plate to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning, Mountlake Terrace head coach Shannon Rasmussen had a thought.
“I didn’t go and actually tell her,” Rasmussen said, “but all I was thinking in my head was, ‘Please just go and hit one out because I’m getting really cold out here. The sun’s down and I want to go home.’”
Wilcox obliged, hitting her second home run of the season over the left-field fence to give the Hawks a 14-13 victory over Edmonds-Woodway in both teams’ Wesco 3A South opener Thursday evening at Mountlake Terrace High School.
“I knew it was a good hit but I thought it bounced at the fence and was a ground-rule double. But then everybody was screaming, ‘Home run!’” Wilcox said. “Then I was like, ‘OK, I can slow down now.’”
Wilcox’s homer capped a comeback that seemed like it would be unnecessary after a nine-run third inning gave Mountlake Terrace a 12-4 lead. Capped by a three-run home run by freshman Sammy Ruiz, the Hawks batted around the order scoring nine runs on five hits.
But Edmonds-Woodway came roaring back. The Warriors got six runs back in the fourth and scored three over the final two innings to take a 13-12 lead going into the bottom of the seventh.
“I just tried to tell them to not try to do everything at once,” said Edmonds-Woodway head coach Mike Venable. “We’re not going to score nine runs in an inning to get back into it. We need to just peck away a little bit. We have a lot of good hitters and a lot of speed, so we can try to take advantage of that and get a couple runs at a time and see if we can put some things together. We happened to just (score six) right away.”
After a Kendra Cooper sacrifice fly tied the score at 12 in the top of the seventh, an RBI single by Taylor Jones gave the Warriors a 13-12 advantage, their first lead since the top of the third inning.
But Mountlake Terrace loaded the bases in the bottom half of the seventh and a two-out, bases loaded walk by Gabby Calhoun drove in the tying run, forcing the extra inning.
“Gabby had a great at-bat, with the bases loaded and two outs, to get that walk to bring the tying run in,” Rasmussen said. “That was a huge at-bat.”
Calhoun, who pitched the final four innings of the game to earn her first win of the season, shut out Edmonds-Woodway in the top of the eighth before Wilcox, who is averaging a home run per game early in the season, led off the bottom half of the inning with the game-winning homer to give Mountlake Terrace (1-0 league, 1-1 overall) its first win of the season.
“I think the one thing this team, in our two games, has shown us is that they aren’t going to give up,” Rasmussen said. “They didn’t get nervous. … They want to stay in the games and we kept battling back. They kind of have the mindset right now that it’s not over until it’s over.”
Wilcox led Mountlake Terrace going 4-for-5 in the contest with three runs scored and two RBI. Jasmine Zenk (0-for-1) scored three times and Ruiz (2-for-3) had a team-high three RBI thanks to her home run.
“That three-run home run was huge in our one big inning that we had,” Rasmussen said. “Our whole order, one through nine, just came through, whether they were getting on base with hits or walks or whatever.”
Edmonds-Woodway, like Mountlake Terrace, got offensive contributions from nearly the entire lineup. Leadoff hitter Moni Jackson was 3-for-4 with three runs scored to lead the Warriors. Jackie Lovelace, the No. 2 hitter behind Jackson, was 4-for-5 with four runs scored and two RBI and Kendra Cooper (2-for-5) added three RBI for Edmonds-Woodway (0-1, 1-2).
“I think our leadoff hitter, Moni Jackson, she seemed to be on (base) every time,” Venable said. “Jackie Lovelace behind her, who again is a speedster, too. The two of them together can really play off each other a lot and that helps us out quite a bit. It’s a lot speed.
“Kendra Cooper had a couple nice hits and Ciara Ortiz hit a two-run double,” Venable continued. “There were a lot of people. I told the girls afterwards, ‘Everybody contributed to our comeback,’ and I was really pleased with that.”
Like Rasmussen with Mountlake Terrace, Venable was please his team fought back late in the game to recapture the lead.
The Warriors head coach almost knew seven innings wasn’t going to be enough to determine a winner.
“I was hoping not when we were up by one going into the bottom of the seventh, but it was probably fitting that it did go into extra innings,” Venable said. “Both teams played hard. The Wesco 3A South will be tough this year. We’ve got a lot of good teams and there will be a lot of games — hopefully not this high-scoring — but a lot of games that are this close.”
Edmonds-Woodway will have a chance for revenge when the two teams meet again in the second-to-last game of the season for the Warriors on May 11.
“It wasn’t fun when we were down 12-4, but coming back and making a game of it made it a lot more fun,” Venable said. “We enjoyed the game. We always play tough games with Mountlake Terrace. We’ll look forward to getting them back at our place and we’ll see what happens there.
“We’ve got a lot of games before they come back. But when we see them again, we’ll remember.”
Mountlake Terrace, because of reschedulings due to inclement weather, kicked off a run of six games in seven weekdays on Thursday. Next up for the Hawks is perennial league power Meadowdale on Friday, and Mountlake Terrace is hoping to continue its hot hitting.
“Tomorrow with Meadowdale, we have to hit,” Wilcox said. “We’ve been hitting really well.”
“I think that we’ve got a lot of momentum going,” Rasmussen added. “We’ve got quite a few new girls — we lost some of our big stars from last year — so we’ve got new girls that have come together and meshed really well. I think the more we’re able to play the more confidence they’ll have in each other.”
At Mountlake Terrace H.S.
Ed.-Woodway 202 601 20 — 13 18 0
Mtlk. Terr. 309 000 11 — 14 12 4
Mariah Woolery, Kyra Collingridge (4) and Ari Girouard. Kira Doan, Gabby Calhoun (5) and Ashley Fitzgerald. WP—Calhoun. LP—Collingridge. 2B—Ciara Ortiz (E-W), Girouard (E-W). HR—Sammy Ruiz (MT), Hannah Wilcox (MT). Records—Edmonds-Woodway 0-1 league, 1-2 overall. Mountlake Terrace 1-0, 1-1.
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