Erika Smyth thought for sure the home run she hit in the bottom of the fourth Tuesday afternoon wasn’t getting out of the infield.
Instead, it carried over the center-field fence at Kentwood to give Kentlake a 4-0 lead in a first-place tiebreaker game against Tahoma.
The home run helped the Falcons prevail 7-2 in the third meeting of the season with Bears — all in less than a week — and earn the No. 1 seed out of the South Puget Sound League North Division.
“Honestly, it didn’t feel the best,” Smyth said. “It just carried over the fence. I didn’t expect it to be a home run. I was sprinting.”
In the grand scheme of things, however, Smyth believes the big blast didn’t mean anything to the end result of the game.
“It was the pitching by Hannah (Sauget), the defense,” she said. “A string of hits that puts pressure on the defense, that’s why we won the game.”
Kentlake coach Greg Kaas gave more credit to Smyth for the long ball.
“That home run also inspired us,” Kaas said. “It also took a little bit of the wind out of their sails.”
Just a little bit, though, as the Bears mounted a comeback in the top of the fifth when Sammii Jimenez hit an infield single followed by a double to the center field fence by Jordan Walley that drove in Tahoma’s first run. Kiley Dunn hit a single up the middle. Two batters later Morgan Engelhardt hitting a single that drove in the Bears’ second run cutting the Falcon lead to 4-2.
But, Tahoma couldn’t muster much more offense after that despite making Kentlake’s outfield work harder than it has all year, according to Kaas.
Kentlake sealed the win with a pair of insurance runs in the bottom of the sixth when Libby Riehl hit a single driving in Jessie Richardson while Keillie Nielsen’s sacrifice fly to center field drove in the final run.
“We did that really well all game,” Smyth said. “We got runners on base, hitting line drives, making good contact. We’re not a home run hitting team. We’re a contact team. We hit lots of singles and doubles.”
Kaas agreed that his players did just about everything right.
“We played a really complete game,” he said. “The kids played really well.”
And in a game against a long time rival such as Tahoma for the right to have a bye into the league semi-finals on Friday, Kaas said, he didn’t have to give the team the usual motivational speech.
“We didn’t need any ‘rah-rah’ to get ready for Tahoma,” he said. “That’s a good team we can’t give opportunities.”
He credited his four seniors, Smyth, Richardson, Brittany Styger and Erin Crowley for leading the team.
“This is probably the best part of high school, beating our long-time rivals,” Smyth said. “For eight years, we’ve been facing Sammii.”
And while that home run may not have meant much, it was a little payback after Jimenez struck out Smyth on May 5 during Kentlake’s Senior Night. It was Smyth’s second home run of her career. Her first came earlier this season against Kentwood on the same field.
This is the second straight season Tahoma and Kentlake split its regular season meetings and tied for first place in the North. Last year, the seeding into the league tournament was a coin flip.
“This is 10 times better than a coin flip,” Kaas said.
After splitting last week, Tahoma beat Thomas Jefferson 4-2 on May 6 and Mount Rainier 9-0 Monday to force the tiebreaker game.
Meanwhile, Tahoma takes the No.2 seed out of the North and will take on the No. 5 seed out of the SPSL South, most likely Todd Beamer. They will play at 4 p.m. on Thursday. The SPSL tournament, which will be at Kent Service Club Park, is for seeding into the West Central District tournament.
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