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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Kentwood committed seven errors \u2013 six in the first three innings combined \u2013 and dug a 13-1 hole before mounting a late rally that fell considerably short.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that it happened now,\u201d said Kentwood coach Jon Aarstad. \u201cDefense is something that we\u2019ve been very solid with. It\u2019s something that we work very hard on and it\u2019s unfortunate that we played this way today. It wasn\u2019t us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Saturday, however, those two trademarks were lost through the first few innings, when Newport built an insurmountable lead.<\/p>\n
It was an unexpected way to end what was a superlative season for the Conquerors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t nerves,\u201d Aarstad insisted. \u201cI think it was over-adrenaline and that\u2019s something that\u2019s hard to turn off.\u201d<\/p>\n
The seven Kentwood errors led to six unearned Newport runs.<\/p>\n
Kentwood ace Alexander Lee, who dominated in last week\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just didn\u2019t come out and play our game,\u201d Lee lamented.<\/p>\n
Lee easily retired the first two Newport batters of the game, before yielding three-straight singles as the Knights took a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Kentwood, however, quickly responded in the bottom half of the inning, when Robbie Morris came home on a fielder\u2019s choice out.<\/p>\n
The wheels, however, quickly came off for Lee and the Conquerors in the top of the second inning, when Newport plated four runs \u2013 two earned \u2013 on six hits and three Kentwood errors.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed like (the errors) compounded one after another,\u201d said Morris, a second baseman who made a dazzling diving grab on an out in the third inning. \u201cThey weren\u2019t mental errors either, they were physical. We were trying, but nothing was going our way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe errors just bit us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newport continued to put pressure on the Conks in the third inning. Newport\u2019s 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\u2019 lead to 9-1.<\/p>\n
Sing added a two-run double off the right-center wall in the fourth as Newport\u2019s lead swelled to 13-1.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything just snowballed on us,\u201d Morris said.<\/p>\n
But the Conquerors didn\u2019t pack it in.<\/p>\n
Back-to-back singles from Lee and Zach Corpuz in the bottom of the fourth inning gave the Conquerors\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt kind of got us started, but we just didn\u2019t have enough to keep going,\u201d Easterbrook said. \u201cIt felt good, but I\u2019d rather have the win.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
And while Kentwood\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The early errors, however, proved to be too much to overcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey never give up. It\u2019s a group of kids \u2026 they don\u2019t fear anything,\u201d Aarstad said. \u201cThey always come out and compete. We just didn\u2019t have enough in the tank.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":8248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8247"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}