TACOMA — The Port Angeles baseball team stayed alive and moved within one win of a state berth by shutting down the White River Hornets 4-0 on Thursday at Franklin Pierce High School.
Port Angeles (11-9) will face the winner between Franklin Pierce and Olympic in a loser-out, winner-to-state game on Saturday, again at Franklin Pierce.
Curan Bradley pitched a complete-game shutout for the Roughriders, scattering five hits and a walk while striking out seven.
“Can’t ask for a better performance from him,” Riders coach Vic Reykdal said.
“Just the way he was mixing his stuff up. He was mixing his fastball in with the nasty curve.
“That left-handed curve is hard for high-schoolers to figure out.”
Bradley helped himself at the plate in the first inning, singling and then scoring on a Jace Bohman double.
A two-out RBI single from Ricky Crawford brought in another run in the fourth.
“That was big,” Reykdal said. “We’ve been working on producing in those situations and getting those tough two-out RBIs.”
Port Angeles added two more runs on a White River error with two outs in the fifth.
“We got a little help from those guys,” Reykdal said.
“Matt Hendry and Bohman singled, then Travis [Paytner] hit one into the hole at shortstop. We were running on it and the first baseman didn’t make the catch.”
The Riders now sit a win away from the state tournament. If they beat Olympic or Franklin Pierce, they would then play for the district’s fifth or sixth seed.
“We are in the running for it and that’s exciting,” Reykdal said.
Reykdal had no preference between facing an Olympic League foe in the Trojans or a more unknown team in the South Puget Sound League’s Cardinals.
“Doesn’t really matter to me,” Reykdal said.
“We’re here to scout them, so we’ll have a good idea of what we will see, either way.”
Sequim is already in the state tournament. The Wolves play North Kitsap in the district semifinals at the Kitsap Country Fairgrounds on Saturday at 10 a.m.
The winner will face the winner between Liberty and Fife in the championship game at 4 p.m. Saturday. The two semifinal losers face off for third place at 7 p.m.
Port Angeles 4, White River 0
Port Angeles 1 0 0 1 2 0 0 — 4 9 0
White River 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 — 0 5 1
WP- Bradley
Pitching Statistics
Port Angeles: Bradley 7 IP, 5 H, 7 K, BB.
Hitting Statistics
Port Angeles: Bradley 2-4 hits, Bohman 2-4, 2B, RBI; Crawford 2-3, RBI; Hendry 1-4, R; Boyer 1-1; Pederson 1-3.
Quilcene in district semis
QUILCENE — A.J. Prater and Eli Harrison have honored for their part in leading the Quilcene baseball team to a league championship and the Class 1B Quad-District semifinals.
Prater was voted SeaTac League MVP by the league’s coaches and Harrison was named to the first team as a catcher and the second team as a pitcher.
Harrison has an ERA of 1.12 and has struck out 94 batters this season.
Three other Rangers received the SeaTac League second team honors: second baseman Ben Bruner, infielder Nate Weller and outfielder Dillon McEdwards.
Quilcene opened the Quad-District tournament Tuesday with a 10-4 win over Evergreen Lutheran, which one of the two teams to beat the Rangers this season.
The Rangers host Oakville in the semifinals today at 3:45 p.m. The game was originally scheduled to be played Thursday.
Against Evergreen Lutheran, Harrison struck out 14 of the 32 batters he faced, while walking three and allowing six hits and three earned runs.
“Poise and maturity keeps Eli focused as he executes his pitches,” Quilcene coach Darrin Dotson said.
“He is a role model for his teammates.”
Harrison also went 3 for 4 at the plate with two runs.
Prater was 3 for 5 with a double and two runs and McEdwards had a two-run triple.
Bruner, an eighth-grader, added to his league-leading RBI total by driving in his 27th run of the season.
Last Saturday, the Rangers defeated Mount Rainier Lutheran to win the league tournament and take the league’s top seed into the district tournament.
Harrison shut down the Hawks, fanning 12 and giving up only five hits and one run. He walked four batters — two were intentional walks — a hit a batter.
“Eli pitched an amazing game, showed great control and poise,” Dotson said.
Prater had two hits and scored one of the Rangers’ two runs.
“I told the boys at the beginning, the team that makes the fewest errors will win,” Dotson said.
“We made one, which allowed a batter to get onto first. This didn’t cost us.
“Mount Rainier had three errors. One error was an overthrow to second from third in an attempt to tag A.J. Prater out while he fought to stay alive in pickle.
The errant throw went into right field and allowed A.J. to score.”
Weller doubled and walked twice and Andy Johnston singled for Quilcene.
Triston Williams was 1 for 3 with a single that he eventually turned into the game-winning run.
Eighth-grader Olin Reynolds went 1 for 3 with the game-winning RBI, scoring Williams and getting the first earned run of the season off Mount Rainier Lutheran’s first-team SeaTac League pitcher.
A win over Oakville earns the Rangers (14-2) a state berth and advances them to Saturday’s district championship game against the winner of the other semifinal between Mount Rainier Lutheran (12-6) and Shoreline Christian (6-10).
