HS Baseball: Bearcats No-Hit T-Birds, Win First League Title Since 2019

5/6/25

WF West 5, Tumwater 1

(Chehalis, WA) After 19 games, the Tumwater Thunderbirds and WF West Bearcats met in THE game on Tuesday afternoon at Bearcat Stadium. With the teams splitting the first two games in which Tumwater won game one 7-0 before WF West won the rematch 2-0 and both owning a league record of 12-1, the Evergreen 2A league title was on the line in a winner-take-all game on Tuesday.

For the Tumwater Thunderbirds, they would look to win their fifth consecutive league title in their recent dominance of the EvCo 2A. For the WF West Bearcats, they would look to end a league title drought, as they looked to win the league for the first time since 2019. With both teams already guaranteed a home game to open up the district tournament, it was all about who would get to call themselves league champions.

Derek Thompson was unavailable after pitching on Monday so Tumwater had to start a different pitcher than they did in the first two games against WF West. Luke Overbay would take the mound and followed up fellow sophomore Hayden Rooney’s 1-2-3 top of the 1st. WF West put a couple of runners on immediately thanks to errors as Carlos Vallejo came to the plate. Vallejo sent a chopper to short and Cody Lambert tried to cut down the runner at the plate but Deacon Meller would slide in safely to give the Bearcats a 1-0 lead. A wild pitch brought home a second run before Beckman Dvorak came through with a two-out RBI single to give the Bearcats the early 3-0 lead.

Tumwater struggled to get the bats going against Hayden Rooney but Luke Overbay really settled in as both pitchers hung up scoreless innings in the 2nd and 3rd. The T-Birds would get Jimmy Womach to third in the 4th but left him stranded to end the inning as Connor Coleman picked up where Rooney left off on the mound, retiring the first eight batters that he faced.

Insurance would come in the 4th and 5th for WF West as they looked to pull away. First, Alex Stafford walked and moved to second on a wild pitch. Once again, Beckman Dvorak would drive him in with an RBI single to make it 4-0. Then in the 5th, Deacon Meller drew a walk before Ross Kelley reached on an error. Weston Potter hit into what looked like a double play, but the relay to first was wild, leading to another error and allowing Meller to score to give WF West a 5-0 lead late.

After Coleman retired the first eight batters, he ran into some trouble with two outs in the 6th. Four consecutive walks to Jimmy Womach, Luke Overbay, Landon Roy, and Derek Thompson resulted in a run and brought the tying run to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs. Bearcat manager Jesse Elam kept Coleman out on the mound and it paid off. Wyatt Chase would hit a grounder to Ross Kelley at short to get out of the inning and escape the jam with the 5-1 lead still intact.

Tumwater’s Braeden Konrad erased a leadoff double to keep the score 5-1 going into the 7th. Peyton Davis would groundout to third on a very close play at first before Konrad was hit by a pitch to put a runner on. Another WF West sophomore in Emmett Goodman would then come in, looking to record the final two outs for the Bearcats. He would get Cody Lambert to pop up to third and was one out away from a combined n0-hitter and a league title. The ball jumped off the bat off Will Bond out to center, but Tucker Land would track it down to make the catch and end the drought. The no-hitter was complete and WF West captured their first Evergreen 2A league title since 2019 with a 5-1 win over Tumwater.

Our Thorbeckes MVP of the game went to Beckman Dvorak for WF West. After not playing in the game the previous night, Dvorak made up for lost time in the DH spot. The lefty went 2-3 with two RBI singles to help lift the Bearcats to the win. Dvorak had half of the hits in the game and his two runs batted in would just be the icing on the cake for the junior.

WF West now moves to 18-2 on the season and 13-1 in league play and earns their first league championship since 2019. They will end the regular season on Friday at 4:30pm when they travel to take on Aberdeen. Tumwater falls to 14-6 on the season and 12-2 in EvCo 2A play. The T-Birds will look to bounce back and build momentum going into districts when they finish the regular season at home on Friday at 4:30pm against Shelton.