4A SPSL champion Puyallup bests 4A NPSL winner Tahoma in matchup of top baseball programs
As the 2023 high school baseball season progressed, and the Tahoma Bears kept adding win after win to their total, what could have been a throw-away nonleague game to conclude the regular season loomed larger and larger.
By a drizzly Thursday night in Puyallup, only the host Vikings stood between Tahoma and an unbeaten regular year. But Puyallup didn’t start the season as the top-ranked Class 4A team in the state for nothing.
“Knowing that they were the No. 1 team, and we started out as the No. 1 team, we really wanted to take that No. 1 spot back,” Puyallup junior catcher Kai Halstead said.
Just who exactly is No. 1 will begin to be deciphered beginning next week when the postseason kicks off. The Vikings assured that there would be no unbeatens to shoot for, though, with their 4-2 victory over Tahoma at Heritage Recreation Center.
Halstead erased a 1-0 deficit with a solid single past third base to score Donte Grant in the bottom of the fourth inning, then two batters later Mason Pike hit a bad-hop triple to score Halstead and Tristan Ringrose in a three-run inning that proved enough for the 2022 4A state runners-up.
Puyallup used four pitchers to hold a Bears offense that had scored four or more runs in every game until Thursday this season. Three Vikings pitched two innings each before Pike stood up on the bump for the seventh inning with Puyallup holding a 4-1 lead.
A Logan Pierce single, Noah Lee’s RBI double and a throwing error from Pike on a comebacker off the bat of Jackson Walker put Bears at second and third with one out and a run in.
“We’ve got to work on that a little bit,” Puyallup coach Marc Wiese said. “We did the same thing on Saturday, Mason came up flat-footed and threw one away.”
But as Walker stood at second representing the tying run, Pike struck out Jackson Burtis, then induced Griffin Bye into a groundout to shortstop to end it.
“We wanted to get some guys some work,” Wiese said. “Go get some ABs. They came out pretty electric and what I tell our guys, the bullseye’s always going to be on your back. We’re 18-2 and they’re 20-0, doesn’t matter. The bullseye’s on your back.”
Jack Dodge led off the game for Tahoma (20-1) with a hard grounder between first and second. Puyallup first baseman Jackson Copeland snared it in the webbing of his glove, but then couldn’t get the ball out of that webbing as Dodge reached first.
Two batters later, senior catcher Carson Ohland lined the first pitch he saw into right center field to score Dodge and the Bears took a 1-0 lead. While Pierce mowed down the Vikings in order over the first three innings, Tahoma mounted another threat in the second.
Lee led off with a double and took third on Walker’s single. But then Halstead changed everything with a snap throw to first, catching Walker straying too far off of first. The pick-off was the huge first out of the inning.
Hunter Grasser then completed his scheduled two innings on the mound with back-to-back strikeouts, keeping Puyallup’s deficit to just a single run as he stranded Lee at third. It stayed that way until Puyallup got its’ first hit from Grant leading off the fourth — a ringing double down the left field line that started the game-winning rally.
