BASEBALL: Kentwood eliminated by Newport, 13-7

The foundation of the Kentwood High baseball team was rocked Saturday morning at Everett Memorial Stadium in the opening round of the Class 4A state tournament.

A team built on doing all the little things right and Gold Glove-caliber defense struggled mightily with both, resulting in a 13-7 season-ending loss to Newport.

Kentwood committed seven errors – six in the first three innings combined – and dug a 13-1 hole before mounting a late rally that fell considerably short.

“It’s unfortunate that it happened now,” said Kentwood coach Jon Aarstad. “Defense is something that we’ve been very solid with. It’s something that we work very hard on and it’s unfortunate that we played this way today. It wasn’t us.”

Indeed. In fact, the Conquerors (17-5) took second in the South Puget Sound League North Division this spring and earned a state berth largely due to its air-tight defense and sound fundamental play.

Saturday, however, those two trademarks were lost through the first few innings, when Newport built an insurmountable lead.

It was an unexpected way to end what was a superlative season for the Conquerors.

“It wasn’t nerves,” Aarstad insisted. “I think it was over-adrenaline and that’s something that’s hard to turn off.”

The seven Kentwood errors led to six unearned Newport runs.

Kentwood ace Alexander Lee, who dominated in last week’s 5-0 state-clinching victory over Olympia, had little chance on the mound. The big righthander allowed five runs in 1 2/3 innings of work, three of which were earned.

“We just didn’t come out and play our game,” Lee lamented.

Lee easily retired the first two Newport batters of the game, before yielding three-straight singles as the Knights took a 1-0 lead.

Kentwood, however, quickly responded in the bottom half of the inning, when Robbie Morris came home on a fielder’s choice out.

The wheels, however, quickly came off for Lee and the Conquerors in the top of the second inning, when Newport plated four runs – two earned – on six hits and three Kentwood errors.

“It seemed like (the errors) compounded one after another,” said Morris, a second baseman who made a dazzling diving grab on an out in the third inning. “They weren’t mental errors either, they were physical. We were trying, but nothing was going our way.

“The errors just bit us.”

Newport continued to put pressure on the Conks in the third inning. Newport’s Victor King led off the inning with a solo home run to left-center field off Kentwood reliever Kent Hagen, giving the Knights a 6-1 lead. Newport shortstop Trace Tam Sing added a two-run homer later in the inning, pushing the Knights’ lead to 9-1.

Sing added a two-run double off the right-center wall in the fourth as Newport’s lead swelled to 13-1.

“Everything just snowballed on us,” Morris said.

But the Conquerors didn’t pack it in.

Back-to-back singles from Lee and Zach Corpuz in the bottom of the fourth inning gave the Conquerors’ offense some life. Kentwood first baseman A.J. Easterbrook gave the Conquerors a needed jolt one batter later, belting a moon shot 3-run homer to dead center, cutting the deficit to 13-4.

“It kind of got us started, but we just didn’t have enough to keep going,” Easterbrook said. “It felt good, but I’d rather have the win.”

The Conquerors added three more runs in the fifth, two on an RBI-double to shallow center field from Easterbrook on a fly ball that Newport outfielders lost in the sun. The double pushed Kentwood to within six runs at 13-7.

And while Kentwood’s offense was finally coming alive, reliever Austin Voth, who came in for Hagen in the fourth, went into shutdown mode. The hard-throwing righthander silenced the Newport bats through the final 3 1/3 innings. Voth, a junior, allowed just two hits, no runs and struck out seven batters in relief.

The early errors, however, proved to be too much to overcome.

“They never give up. It’s a group of kids … they don’t fear anything,” Aarstad said. “They always come out and compete. We just didn’t have enough in the tank.”