Tahoma gets the first day of the 4A South Puget Sound League fastpitch tournament off this year while North division rival Kentlake will play on day one for the first time since 2009.
For the Bears, winning the North with a 16-0 record secured the top seed out of the division and a spot in the semi-finals Friday, while the Falcons will play two games Thursday to start the tournament at Kent Service Club Park.
Tahoma hasn’t lost since March when it dropped two non-league games. Since then Tahoma rolled through the SPSL North schedule — at least until April 30 in the last regular season game against a Kentwood team that was on the rise.
Then the Bears came up against Kendall Goodwin, the Conquerors’ standout sophomore pitcher, who allowed just five hits and two runs in the game. Tahoma didn’t score its first run until the bottom of the sixth when freshman shortstop Mia Corbin touched home plate.
The 2-1 victory over the Conks was one of the biggest tests of the season for the Bears.
“I think Kendall hit her form,” said Tahoma coach Tom Milligan. “Coming off her injury (in the first game), she wasn’t where she was her freshman year. I didn’t think she was going to plateau her freshman year. I thought she was going to get better.”
In the first matchup between Tahoma and Kentwood, Goodwin had only just returned to the circle, and the Bears won 13-0. Milligan said Goodwin’s pitches weren’t working consistently at that point and her endurance wasn’t where it needed to be to hold Tahoma.
“That (second) game … it was like, ‘Oh, crap. She’s back,’” Milligan said. “It got us ready for people we’re going to face, those teams that you hit in SPSL or the district level are there either because they score a whole load of runs or they have good defense and a good pitcher.”
Milligan said after the game he congratulated the girls on what they accomplished this season then reminded them of how close the game was and how it demonstrated the importance of working hard, to build on that experience when the time comes in the playoffs to play small ball and manufacture runs in that kind of situation.
“It happened at just the right time, to have that at the end of the season,” Milligan said. “I want one of those close games … that felt like we had to fight all the way to the end.”
Tahoma didn’t need to win the game to clinch the division crown and the No. 1 seed out of the North as it did that a week earlier against Thomas Jefferson, however, it could make a difference when the league tournament starts for the Bears Friday.
Milligan, who is in his eighth year coaching Tahoma fastpitch, has never been in this position so he doesn’t know for sure what the top seed means.
“We’ve always been on the other end of it where you start off on Thursday … and you jump into Friday and here comes Kentlake or Puyallup or Rogers,” Milligan said. “I grabbed (former Kentlake coach Greg) Kaas after a game and I said, ‘What does it really mean?’ And he said, ‘You’ll see.’”
One advantage Milligan does see is that when Tahoma plays its first game Friday, the opponent will be playing its third game in 24 hours, which could mean endurance could come into play even though many of the girls play on traveling select teams who compete in weekend tournaments with as many, if not more, games in a two-day period.
On the flip side, Milligan explained, the Bears could come up against a team that’s on a roll. If the team is clicking it doesn’t matter who they face. Tahoma has done that in the past, he said.
“I do think that if you get a (warm) day … and you get zapped out there for four or five hours and you’re coming back into that fire the next day, that could be an advantage for us,” Milligan said. “But, I won’t know until we live it.”
Meanwhile, Kentlake could well be that team with momentum heading into the second day playing from the fifth seed in the division.
Kentlake coach Kaylee Powell, in her second season at the helm for the Falcons, wrote in an email that the team has a different strategy heading into the playoffs than in the past.
“We are doing a bit of non-traditional preparation,” Powell wrote. “We have taken ground balls and fly balls all season. What we are really working on is team building. Any team at any point in the season can beat anyone if they come together.”
Powell added that she is trying to make the experience fun while helping the girls harness their passion for the game to help them focus on winning.
“We are learning how to worry only about things we can control,” she wrote. “Our focus, effort and attitude. If we can get control of those, everything else will fall into place.”
Both Tahoma and Kentlake will go on to play at the West Central District tournament next weekend at Sprinker Recreation Center. Both the Bears and the Falcons made trips to the 4A state tournament in Spokane last year. Tahoma is looking for its third straight trip to state while Kentlake is shooting for its fourth consecutive and 12th overall trip in the program’s 16-year-history.
