PORT TOWNSEND — The fledgling East Jefferson softball team wrapped up its home season with a victory Monday versus Vashon, looking for bigger and better things next season.
The Rivals beat Vashon 8-6 in the second half of a doubleheader postponed by a rainout, overcoming a 16-1 loss in the opening game.
Coach Chad Witheridge said pitcher Macy Aumock had a good game.
“She found her groove and threw the pitches she needed to throw,” Witheridge said.
Witheridge also said that Breanne Huntingford, just an eighth-grader playing varsity high school sports, was a force at the plate, hitting the ball all over the field.
It was the second win of the season for the Rivals, who, entering the spring, didn’t appear they were going to have softball. Neither Chimacum nor Port Townsend have had softball teams since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was the first year for kids from four different programs to come together. I wasn’t sure we were going to win even one game, so this was a pretty big win,” Witheridge said.
The team came together very quickly this year and “we had to beg and plead with schools to schedule us,” Witheridge said.
Unlike all the other Rivals teams, the softball team didn’t even have new uniforms and played wearing old Chimacum Cowboys uniforms.
After all that, the team finished fifth out of six teams in the Nisqually 1A League. Next year, the Rivals will get new uniforms like the rest of the program’s teams, Witheridge said.
“There’s only one place to go and that’s up,” he said.
East Jefferson does have one game left, on the road at Seattle Christian today.
