MSHS girls’ hoops season restarted following COVID quarantine lift thanks to testing issue, plus diamond cuts and the SVSJ’s weekly volleyball report for May 5

Good Wednesday morning. A lot going on this morning, but we have major news from the hardwood. Mount Si High School’s girls’ basketball team got new life last night after the varsity and junior varsity squads had their COVID-19 quarantine lifted following word that the test that resulted in the quarantine turned out to be an apparent false positive.

The announcement was made on social media last night, with the program reporting all families involved received notice of the lifting, which will allow the Wildcats to resume practice and get one last game – this Friday at Liberty High School against the Patriots.

This apparent false positive is now the second such one affecting a Mount Si High School girls’ sports team, and may have some Wildcat sports parents questioning the reliability of the school’s testing, and also perhaps wondering now if the positive tests that shut down football last month early may, too, have been false positives. We’ll do some checking for you on that today if we are able. The first “false positive” affected Wildcat girls’ soccer, and while that issue was cleared up quickly, it didn’t come until after the school was forced to cancel the season finale game with Hazen, also last month.

We’re sure parents have a lot of questions and we’ll again do our best to check on all that for you today.

Now to actual games on the field. Diamond cuts to start.

Softball: Red Wolves fall to Lynnwood
Cedarcrest High School’s softball ladies were sitting pretty yesterday afternoon holding their own against the Lynnwood Royals, but one inning changed all that.

Lynnwood scored five fifth-inning runs to rally from an early 3-1 hole to defeat the Red Wolves 7-4 last night at Lynnwood High School. Freshman Nyree Johnson went 3-3 with two runs scored leading the Royals in this one, while Allyson Smith went 2-3 with a triple, run scored and two RBI’s to lead CHS.

The Red Wolves took the lead out of the gate in the first inning thanks to a Riley Warden triple and subsequent run-scoring single by Smith that scored Warden from third base, then built some more cushion in the third with Smith’s triple that scored Kat Townley, and an ensuing Lynnwood error on a Maddie Knowles grounder that scored the CHS junior. The Royals then rallied, and used a pair of key defensive errors by Cedarcrest’s Townley and Sierra Owens to get their five-run onslaught in the fifth. The Red Wolves tried to mount a comeback late, scoring a run in the seventh off a Lynnwood error, but it proved to be too little, too late for the ladies as they could not mount much more.

The Red Wolves will look to rebound this afternoon when they meet Edmonds-Woodway at Edmonds-Woodway High School, at 4:00 p.m.

Krivanek’s unstoppable in Red Wolve JV win: Rachel and Jo Krivanek were a sisterly wrecking crew for Cedarcrest’s JV’s yesterday, going a combined 6-7 with three doubles, seven stolen bases, seven runs scored and four RBI’s, as the Red Wolves outslugged Mountlake Terrace 11-6 at Mountlake Terrace High School. Izzy Buchan also pitched in for Cedarcrest, going 2-4 with a double, run scored and three RBI’s, while Ridley Deklotz too had a solid game for the victors, going 2-3 with a double and run scored. Deklotz and Teigan Robertson pitched for CHS with Deklotz allowing an unearned run on three hits striking out two in 3 1/3 innings getting the win in relief. CHS’s JV is at Shorewood today.

Baseball: CHS uses walks, and a lot of them, to beat Lynnwood
Cedarcrest hitters utilized 14 Lynnwood walks and took care of the Royals at home in Duvall last night 12-6 to earn a split of their season series. Cole Linder led the way for CHS, going 1-3 with two walks, two runs scored and an RBI as the Red Wolves won despite only getting five hits. The walks were the story, as seven of the nine CHS hitters in the lineup reached base at least once on a so-called “free pass.”

Joey Newell was the winner on the hill for the Red Wolves, allowing three runs, two earned, on seven hits striking out seven in 5 2/3 innings. CHS pitching didn’t struggle nearly as bad in the walk department as Lynnwood’s hurlers did, with Newell and Linder combining for just four walks on the afternoon.

The Red Wolve runs came on a pair of six-run frames in the third and fourth innings. The third inning onslaught came with two outs. Linder’s single with Trace Crossland on base at third scored him to open Cedarcrest’s scoring, then walks to Kian Pegueros-Warren, Mason Pudwill, Sam Chase and Nate Hoyer helped start an assembly line-style rally which gave the Red Wolves the lead. Kobe Alves capped the third inning off with a two-RBI single scoring Pudwill and Chase.

The fourth inning explosion started off with a Pegueros-Warren single, followed by a Lynnwood error on a Pudwill grounder that scored Newell, on base at the time at third. Then the assembly line started up again, with walks to Chase, Hoyer (after a wild pitch scored a run), Alves and J.J. Polacek propelling the Red Wolves. Crossland capped it off with what was supposed to be a sacrifice fly out but instead turned into a double play after Alves was called out at third attempting to advance a base on the play. Hoyer did score before the final out was recorded, though, helping CHS. Linder then finished the job on the hill after catching a runner attempting to steal a base in the seventh for Lynnwood.

It’s Senior Day today when CHS hosts Monroe at 4:00 p.m. at Cedarcrest High School in Duvall.

Time now for our weekly volleyball report.

Team with local athletes advances to nationals
This past weekend in the USA Volleyball Puget Sound Region saw the region’s 14U teams compete for a spot at the upcoming USA Volleyball Nationals tournament this summer in Las Vegas, and a team featuring local athletes looks to have punched a ticket.

The Northwest Juniors 14U Blue team, from Bellevue, won their division at the regional bid tournament in Centralia, beating a Puyallup-area team in three sets in the best-of-three contest. The squad, with Cedarcrest HS’s Cait Hawkins and Twin Falls Middle School’s Carissa Zwiefelhofer, went a staggering 6-0 and only lost two sets out of a total of 14 played on the weekend in the 16-team divisional round.

Two other teams with locals also competed. Northwest’s 14U Grey, with three Snoqualmie Valley middle-schoolers – Keely Walker and Audrey Gibbs from Chief Kanim MS in Fall City and Alyssa Morgan from Snoqualmie MS – took 11th in their division and in a separate division, the Kent-based North Pacific Juniors National, formerly Kent Juniors, took eighth. That team features Isabelle Foote, the daughter of longtime Mount Si High School head volleyball coach Bonnie Foote.

Bid tournaments for older age groups will happen later this month.

This weekend: Regional qualifier tournaments are all the rage as the local Power League schedule has wrapped up. In Denver, the Colorado Crossroads is hosting a weekend for 15U-17U teams while in Minneapolis, younger age groups (12U-14U) will be competing for a spot to nationals at the Northern Lights tournament. We’ll check to see if local teams are competing and if any are, we’ll advise. The Crossroads is by the way offering a streaming package for $50 for the weekend, Google Colorado Crossroads to get a link to their website for more information on that. Locally, the Northwest Juniors are hosting a Mothers’ Day weekend event at the HUB facility in Centralia that hosted this past weekend’s bid event. With the pause in the state’s COVID-19 restart plan announced yesterday by Washington Governor Jay Inslee, this event will take place subject to current Lewis County COVID restrictions.

We’ll have more next week for you here.

Rhett Workman

About Rhett Workman

Rhett Workman is the editor of the Snoqualmie Valley Sports Journal. Workman is a veteran sports journalist, having covered Snoqualmie Valley sports for nearly a decade with the Snoqualmie Valley Record newspaper before starting up the SVSJ. Workman’s coverage has earned the support and respect of Valley coaches, players, parents and fans, and the SVSJ continues the standard of coverage that Workman brought to the Valley Record.View all posts by Rhett Workman →

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