Wolf Point rides into title game
WHITEFISH - At the last minute, the Wolf Point Yellow Jackets were invited to play in the 20th Annual Ed Gallo American Legion baseball tournament after a spot opened up.
They barely had a full roster, didn't have a whole lot of money and weren't sure where they'd sleep, but coach Jack Sprague said "We'll be there" and loaded his team on the Amtrak.
Well, a few days and 463 miles later, the Jackets are in the championship game.
Walker DeWitt crushed a two-out pitch over the center field fence in the first inning and Wolf Point put together a 9-run third inning to grab their third-straight win at Ed Gallo with a 14-4 victory over the Glacier Twins A team at Memorial Field on a soggy Friday.
The Yellow Jackets won in five innings via the eight-run rule and secured a spot in today's 5:15 p.m. championship finale against either the Kootenai Valley Rangers or the Pullman Posse.
After DeWitt's solo shot in the first, Curt Kurokawa stepped up and cranked a 2-2 pitch that smacked the right field fence.
Those back-to-back punches proved to be the shot in the arm for Wolf Point's offense.
"We'd been putting up zeroes early the whole tournament," Sprague said. "Then, (with) two guys out, Walker comes up and gets a great pass on the ball and carries it out and that sets the tone …The boys just started going 'OK, let's go hit it,' and they went after it."
After Wolf Point jumped to an early lead, Glacier's Chris King hit a RBI double in the first and Michael Heeter nailed a RBI triple in the second to knot the game at 2-all.
But in the third inning, Wolf Point drenched the Twins' spirits with four hits and a number of savvy at-bats that turned into
walks and eventually the nine runs that Glacier couldn't make up.
Fresh off the train, the Jackets started out the tournament with a loss to the Kalispell Lakers on Thursday. Since then, they have won three straight and have a chance at winning a championship tourney on the opposite side of the state, something no one on the club could have predicted a week ago.
Sprague weighed the options on Monday when the Jackets were invited after another team dropped out. Six Wolf Point players were already lined up to play in another tournament plus Sprague wasn't sure where the money would come from to travel. The local support rallied together pretty fast, though.
"I didn't know if we could do it, but great people in Wolf Point raised some money, we got the train tickets, caught the train and rode it out," he said.
Whitefish High offered to house the team for the week, and suddenly the Yellow Jackets started playing like they were back home.
"After the first loss we just needed to focus on picking up wins," Sprague said. "But that's why we came here, to play in the championship game. So hopefully we'll get a chance tomorrow and go after it."
Wolf Point Yellow Jackets 209 03x x -14 9 2
Glacier Twins A 110 01x x - 4 5 2
Curt Zimmerman and Brian Vine. Zach Maassen, Mike Heeter (3) and Jeremy Nielson. WP - Zimmerman. LP - Maassen.
WOLF POINT - Nolan Harris 1-3, Adam Denny 1-3, Walker DeWitt 1-2, Chris Kurokawa 2-2, Brian Vine 1-2, Joe Miller 1-3, Tom Leland 1-3, Manny Brown 1-2, Brew Baldry 0-3.
HR - DeWitt; 2B - Kurokawa; RBI - Miller 3, Vine 2, Leland 2, DeWitt, Harris, Kurokawa, Brown
GLACIER - Devyn Rocker 0-2, Carl Talsma 1-3, Jeremy Nielson 0-2, Chris King 2-3, Kyler Blades 0-2, Zach Maasen 0-1, Brynn Thomas 0-2, Michael Heeter 2-2, Kris Gross 0-2.
3B - Heeter; 2B - King 2; RBI - King 2, Heeter 2.
Ed Gallo Tournament
Friday's Results
Spokane (Ferris' 13, Kalispell Lakers 3
Wolf Point Yellow Jackets 11, Glacier All-Stars 2
Kootenai Valley Rangers 13, Pullman Posse 0
Wolf Point Yellow Jackets 14, Glacier Twins 4
Today's Schedule
9 a.m. - Kalispell Lakers vs. Pullman Posse
11:45 a.m. - 3rd vs. 3rd
2:30 p.m. - 2nd vs. 2nd
5:15 p.m. - 1st vs. 1st