KINGSTON – The Kingston-North Kitsap baseball rivalry heated up Monday, as the Vikings downed the Buccaneers 10-9 in the teams’ second meeting of the season.
Prior to Monday’s game, North and Kingston were tied with Klahowya for first place in the Olympic League. The win kept North (12-4, 11-3) knotted at the top with the Eagles, but it didn’t come easily. The lead changed hands three times, and a total of eight pitchers went to the mound throughout the contest.
“We didn’t play the smartest baseball game we ever had, but I thought we battled like crazy and we got down, but we never let down,” said North Kitsap head coach Jeff Weible. “I’ll take an ugly win over a pretty loss any day.”
When the two squads faced each other previously, in late March, Kingston (11-6, 10-5) squeaked out a 4-3 victory. This week, the Vikings were glad to get that win back on the Bucs’ home turf.
“It’s always nice beating Kingston,” Weible said. “I think this rivalry is just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger every time we play each other. The kids know each other and they like each other, but they want to beat each other really bad, so it’s fun.”
Kingston took a 1-0 lead early in the game, but at the top of the third, North equalized when Berkley Nilles came home from second on a Daniel Jewett single. Kingston starting pitcher Tyler Sullivan avoided allowing another run in the fourth by getting Austin Abrahamson to ground out with the bases loaded to end the inning.
The Bucs pulled ahead 3-1 in the bottom of the fourth, after Rico Lemay’s RBI single and a Paul Bagala sacrifice fly to deep left-center. North countered in the fifth, when Justin Tapp came in to pitch and the Vikings took a 4-3 lead behind two RBI from Andy Smith and one from Kevin Stringer. After Sullivan drove in the tying run for the Bucs in the bottom of the fifth, North brought in Abrahamson in relief. Kingston would then send four more runners across the plate to take an 8-4 lead. When Austin Overton walked the first two Viking batters in the sixth, Kingston quickly replaced him with Tyler Klopp, who allowed six runs, giving North a 10-8 advantage.
In the bottom of the seventh, with the Bucs still down by two, Kingston catcher Curtis Wildung began his team’s final at-bat with a solo shot over the right field fence. But North Kitsap’s Jewett replaced Abrahamson and struck out three of the next four batters to save the game for the Vikings.
“It’s kind of tough,” said Kingston head coach Scott McKay. “You can downplay it and not talk about it all you want, but the bottom line is they (Kingston) have been playing with those kids since they were six years old, so they know them, and if there’s a team they want to beat, other than Klahowya, that’s the team they want to get.”
The Bucs dropped another spot in the league after a Wednesday loss to Olympic and will host first-place Klahowya today at 4 p.m. in Kingston.
