BASEBALL: Surging Kentlake getting offensive

The Kentlake High baseball team has a target on its chest.

Winning the South Puget Sound League North Division title and establishing school history by taking second at state the previous season will do that to a program.

After a slow start, however, the Falcons have put things together.

And in a big way.

Since dropping consecutive games, first against Tahoma 8-2 on March 24 and then 7-3 to Kentwood on March 27, there hasn’t been a hotter team in the SPSL North than the Falcons. Kentlake entered play on Friday having won five straight games. And these haven’t exactly been garden variety wins, either. Matter of fact, they’ve all been blowouts.

Suffice to say, the Falcons have turned it up a notch.

“I think the switch has been turned on in our last few games,” said third baseman Brandon Cinkovich, who collected seven hits in a two-game span last week in wins over Federal Way and Kent-Meridian. “After the Tahoma and Kentwood losses, we kicked it up a notch. That was tough. Those are our two toughest rivals. We’re all friends with a lot of them and we wanted to be the top dog in the area.”

By season’s end, the Falcons very well may be just that. If their current offensive binge keeps up, North Division foes will be hard pressed to slow down Kentlake, which has plated 64 runs over its last four games.

“I think it’s pretty much clicked for us,” said Kentlake’s Miles Nagel, who entered play Friday afternoon with three home runs, all of which came during the previous five games. “I think we just started off slow. We just weren’t there as a team mentally. We were thinking of last year and not this year.”

Rest assured, the Falcons are now thinking about nothing but this year.

During their five-game eruption, the Falcons (5-2 in league play entering Friday) not only pushed 79 runs across the plate, but collected 85 hits. All in just 31 innings of play. And it’s not only the number of hits that Kentlake is clearly overwhelming its opponents with, but the Falcons raw power. Of those 85 hits, eight have left the yard.

“We’re playing like we’re the underdogs right now,” Cinkovich said. “We’re fighting through. We realized teams are out to get us.”

Which hasn’t been a good thing for opponents since March 31, when Kentlake lit up Thomas Jefferson with 16 hits in a 14-4 win. Nagel, Jacob Thielman and outfielder Andy Enders all connected for home runs against the Raiders.

The offensive barrage was just getting started. Because three days later, Kentlake blasted Auburn with 15 hits in a 14-5 win. Nagel again led the way with three hits. Three days later, Federal Way hung with the Falcons, forging a 2-2 tie through three innings only to watch Kentlake post five runs in the fourth inning and five more in the sixth. Shortstop Bobby Joe Tannehill led that hit parade, going 5-for-5 with a home run. Cinkovich, nearly as hot as Tannehill, added three hits and five RBIs.

The biggest outburst of all, however, came a day later against Kent-Meridian, when the Falcons scored five runs in the first inning and 19 more in the second en route to a 24-2, five-inning drubbing. Cinkovich added four more hits, four runs scored and a home run. Not to be outdone, Nagel belted a pair of long balls while the Falcons received a fourth home run from Ryan Esping. Meanwhile, Tannehill collected four more hits and three runs scored.

On Wednesday, Kentlake continued to crush, blowing out Auburn 15-2, a game in which the Falcons collected 14 more hits, three apiece by Cinkovich, Lewi Larson and Zach Wright.

“At the beginning of the season, I was kind of struggling,” Cinkovich said. “When I relax, I hit a lot better. Now, it seems like when the ball is coming in, it just stops and says, ‘hit it.’”

The Falcons have been doing just that.

But it hasn’t yet showed up in the state rankings. Kentlake opened the season ranked among the top five, but since falling to Kentwood and Tahoma, it has dropped out of the top 10. In a league where parity has proven to be the name of the game — no SPSL North team has gone unbeaten through league play since Auburn in 2002 — Kentlake looks to be the most dangerous team heading down the stretch.

A team with a target on its chest that is just now putting it all together.

“I feel like we just came together,” Nagel said. “I feel like it clicked after our first two losses. After we lost to Kentwood, we noticed something was wrong and we fixed it.”