On May 9, fans sat on bleachers outside of Cougar Ballpark, cheering on their respective teams. While the Central Kitsap boys baseball team played their best throughout the game they finished the game with a final score of 10-5 with the Bainbridge Boys baseball team coming out on top..
The first few innings of the game were slow for CK with Bainbridge led by 2 runs by the end of the second inning. Each player had a hard time getting the ball to travel far due to the high winds during the game.
“We could have won this,” catcher Larry Richardson said. “ It was competitive. [The] pitching was good. The air killed us really. We [just] needed to swing the bat a little bit more…”
However, in the third inning, possibly thanks to the home team’s cheering for their teammates, CK managed to gain some momentum to score 3 runs. This momentum carried CK back into contention, pushing the score to 5-3 with Bainbridge still leading.
“We had kept our morale high…” Richardson said. “I think we really did lock stuff in at that time and got our [things] together and that was like we were family..”
Nevertheless, the game ended with a final score of 10-5 Bainbridge, resulting in a loss for Central Kitsap’s last game of the season. However, the team did not allow it to place them in distraught, instead looking at how well they performed during the game.
“It’s always tough to end the year on a loss,” Coach Abraham Lupkin said. “However, what we were excited about was that we didn’t roll over. We competed all the way through the game. We were able to put up some strong offensive performances, our pitching overall for the day was outstanding. Just kind of shot ourselves in the foot a little bit with some defensive blunders that ended up costing in the long run.”
After the game, players didn’t just look at the most recent games for reflection, but games in the past as well. Players personally looked over their skills and made plans on returning for next year’s season.
“I feel like I improved [in] pitching and batting,” pitcher and outfielder Logan Young said. “My offense got better, and so did my defense, blue pitching…My travel team wants me to play first base [next year], so [I’ll be trying out for that position]”
As the season came to an end, the Central Kitsap team had many ups, downs, wins and losses. Nevertheless, Lupkin is quite proud of his team and has noted some improvements from his team.
“I was very proud of all of them,” Lupkin said. “They worked very hard this year, and we saw big strides and a lot of aspects of their game, especially on the mental side of things, learning situational defense, offensive approaches, and how to pitch to batters in different situations…Right now, We’re gonna give the guys a chance to get a little rest, and then they’ll go off and play their summer ball seasons. Come next season, when we have tryouts in March, we’ll hope to see all these guys back and see how well they’ve improved over the summer months.”
