Lynden shuts out Sehome to advance in 2A playoffs

The bus ride to Anacortes was a quiet one for the Lynden High School baseball team.

Before facing the Sehome Mariners in a Saturday playoff game, head coach Cory White and his team emerged from the Lynden High gymnasium and a memorial service for former Lions’ football coach Curt Kramme, who died last month after battling cancer.

The team, White said, walked straight down to the field house after the service, donned their uniforms and began focusing on their game.

“There were a lot of unknowns as coaches, how (they) were going to respond,” he said.

The response was terrific, as second-seeded Lynden (18-2) shut out Sehome (13-8) 4-0 in the first round of the 2A Bi-District Tournament at Volunteer Field.

Lions’ starting pitcher Trevin Hope pitched a complete game, holding the Mariners to just four hits while delivering five strikeouts and two walks in an 89-pitch outing. After throwing 42 pitches in the first two innings, Hope gave up just two hits and had no walks the remaining four times he took the mound.

The game remained scoreless until the bottom of the second inning, when a wild pitch by Sehome’s Felix Zavisubin allowed Lynden’s Marcos VanderVeen to score.

The game remained 1-0 until Lynden broke things open in the bottom of the sixth with a seven-batter inning. It started early with catcher Cole Marlowe’s lead-off triple and continued with Vanderveen’s RBI single.

But sophomore Devin Homstrom had perhaps the biggest play of the game, pinch-hitting an RBI double to dash Sehome’s chances of an easy comeback.

The win, said White, was a nice tribute to Kramme, who was also a teacher and, for a time, one of the baseball team’s coaches.

“He was always at our playoff games,” White said. “I pictured where he’d be sitting if he was here today.”

Lynden moves on to face third-seeded Anacortes (14-6) on Tuesday, May 9th at 6 p.m. in Anacortes.

Despite the loss, Sehome’s season isn’t yet over: they’ll play Mountlake Terrace in a loser-out game on May 9th at 3 p.m. in Anacortes.

This story was originally published May 7, 2017 at 8:31 AM with the headline "Lynden shuts out Sehome to advance in 2A playoffs."