4A Baseball | Richland beats Puyallup for state title

Richland coach Ben Jacobs was ready to walk away six years ago. He had 15 years as a coach behind him. He had a state championships. But first, he had to talk with his son, Brett.

"You're not quitting, are you dad?" the son, then in sixth grade, asked. "You're not hanging around to coach me?"

As Ben Jacobs recalled, "I didn't realize it meant that much to him."

So the coach hung around, and on Saturday he won his third championship since. This one, with a 4-3 victory against Puyallup, was the second for Brett Jacobs and many of the Richland seniors who were on the 2007 title team.

"I'll always know we went out on top," Brett Jacobs said.

The top-ranked Bombers (24-2), who averaged 10 runs this season, did so with just three hits, taking advantage of walks and two Puyallup errors. Those three hits held up, thanks to starter Kyle Stumetz.

At Friday night's semifinals, Richland was watching third-ranked Puyallup from the stands. Most of the Bombers were awed by the Vikings' size. But Stumetz said, "You know what? I want to face Puyallup."

In a complete game, he kept throwing strikes and limited Puyallup to seven hits and two earned runs.

Puyallup had cut the Bombers' lead to 4-3 in the top of the sixth, when Tyler Peterson doubled with two outs and Joe Leinweber singled him in. But Richland shortstop Brett Jacobs, with a fantastic throw on a grounder, ended the inning there.

In the seventh, Puyallup's Tyson Sykes led off with a single but was tagged out on a grounder, and Stumetz picked off the last Vikings runner.

"I was actually throwing harder that last inning," Stumetz said.

Richland took a 4-2 lead in the third with three runs on only one hit, an RBI single by UW-bound slugger Cody Shepherd. The next two Richland runs, both unearned, came in on a Puyallup error and a ground out.

"They were just a little better than us," said Puyallup coach Marc Wiese, whose team reached the championship for the first time.

Third-fourth

Tahoma 7, Newport 6

In a riveting seventh, the Bears scored four runs to take the lead and then survived a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the bottom of the inning.

Newport took a 6-3 lead into the top of the seventh, but Taylor Smart's RBI triple — which landed just out of reach of a diving Newport outfielder — got Tahoma's rally going. Jerad Casper tied it with an RBI sacrifice fly, and Brian Olson hit a two-out RBI single to give Tahoma (22-3) the lead.

In the bottom of the seventh, with Newport runners at second and third with one out, Tahoma coach Russ Hayden decided to load the bases and take his chances. Reliever Justin Cloud got out of the inning with a strikeout and fly out.

Thomas Hammett hit a two-run homer in the second for Tahoma, and Colin Hering had two hits and three RBI for Newport (16-11).