The Oak Harbor Legion A baseball team finished fourth out of eight teams at the Ferndale Tournament June 24 to 26.
The Wildcats won two of five games, and in each of the losses it was one bad inning that led to Oak Harbor’s downfall.
Oak Harbor (5-2, 10-8) returns to league action Tuesday, June 28, with Burlington #1 (3-4 in league) at Coupeville High School at 6 p.m. The two teams meet again Wednesday in Burlington at 6.
Oak Harbor overcame seven errors and generated only three hits while coming back to defeat Arlington 4-3 in the tournament opener Friday. Down 3-1, Oak Harbor scored single runs in the fifth, sixth and seventh for the win.
In the seventh, Anthony Steward led off with a walk and scored the game winner after a pair of Arlington errors.
Andrew Snavely struck out six to earn the win; he also singled and scored a run.
Saturday against Ferndale, Oak Harbor took a 3-1 lead into the bottom of the seventh, then Ferndale pushed across three runs with the help of two Oak Harbor errors for the 4-3 win.
Teddy Peterschmidt allowed just one earned run while picking up the loss; he also rapped a double.
Later that day, Oak Harbor allowed a two-run lead to slip away when Stanwood scored three in the bottom of the sixth to win 8-7.
Stanwood had only two hits (one a bad-hop single) in the inning, but Oak Harbor committed two errors, walked one and forced in the go-ahead run by hitting a batter.
Oak Harbor loaded the bases but couldn’t score in the seventh.
Zach Zimmer had two hits, including a double, and drove in three runs; Austyn Walker singled twice and had two RBI; and Grant Schroeder had two hits.
Sunday Oak Harbor defeated Burlington 8-5. This time the Wildcats were able to overcome a bad third inning when they fell behind 3-0.
Zimmer threw a good game according to coach Tyson VanDam, “keeping the Burlington hitters off balance.” Ben Etzell closed the game in the seventh.
Offensively, Schroeder and Walker doubled for Oak Harbor.
In the game for third and fourth place, Oak Harbor fell to Meridian 9-6.
Again a bad inning haunted Oak Harbor and it trailed 6-0 after three.
Oak Harbor bounced back with a five-run third to get back into the game.
VanDam said, “For the first time this year our pitching really struggled all game. We walked and hit more batters then they had hits and that cost us down the stretch.”
