A handful of games remain to be played in the regular season softball schedule, and the South Kitsap Wolves find themselves in a dead heat of a familiar race to secure district playoff seeding.
Yet that is just a stepping stone to the true goal in mind for the squad. The Wolves continue to look ahead with an eagerness to secure their first state berth since 2017, and who they play in the opening week of the postseason could have a large impact on those ambitions.
While coach Bobby Lawrence and his team might have enjoyed the benefit of a cupcake schedule in different circumstances, things just manage to hit a different level of competitiveness in the South Puget Sound League. Teams like Olympia, Emerald Ridge, Sumner and Rogers contend for the league’s top spots, while the Wolves find themselves in a familiar scrap for a middle seed in the annual tournament.
“It’s wide open,” Lawrence said. “Everybody in the SPSL is a competitor. Everybody is playing tough. You have to take every game seriously.”
South Kitsap has handily won almost all of its games vs. teams in the bottom half of the league but has also proved time and again to its top league rivals that it can hang with the best and even finish such games. The Wolves’ April 22 and April 24 home contests vs. Sumner and Puyallup, while different in outcome, put such abilities on display.
Coming off an unsettling 10-0 loss against Graham Kapowsin the previous week, the Wolves were hoping to not only recover but resurge against the league’s heavier hitters on their home field.
“Believe in the process,” Lawrence has continued to tell his players. “Get done what needs to get done, and we can get this done.”
They were oh so close against Sumner, down by just a run after five grueling innings before the Spartans blew the game wide open with four runs in the sixth inning and three more in the seventh. The Wolves closed the gap in the last half-inning to make it a 12-7 final.
It was a visibly frustrating game for a core team leader in senior pitcher Kamdyn Hagerty, whom Lawrence later revealed to be not just upset with the loss. He said, “She’s been dealing with a rotator cuff issue, so we’re just watching that and making sure she stays alright.”
As quickly as they were knocked down, the Wolves managed to get back up two days later in a similar back-and-forth affair against Puyallup. Once again, they were faced with a one-run deficit after five innings, but a shutdown pitching effort for two innings from Hagerty and two runs in the bottom of the sixth catapulted the Wolves to a 9-8 victory over the Vikings. Senior Ryleigh Wotzka celebrated a career day on the diamond with a home run and four runs batted in.
Lawrence attributes renewing wins like this to team chemistry, a squad that remains on track to have its best regular-season finish since 2018. “They are learning to become more accountable, not just for themselves, but for each other,” he said. “They know how to pick each other up.”
