The Vashon High School baseball team began the 2014 season with a three-inning jamboree in Orting and a non-league game with Fife, coming out of the jamboree with a tie and a win, only to drop 1-9 to Fife with few hits and a struggling pitching staff.

The Pirates began their official season March 20 with a game against Seattle Christian, playing to a 10-0 loss. The game got off to a rough start with a few Pirate errors and walks, and in the second inning, Seattle Christian got a jump on the Pirates with a grand slam home run. With the score at 7-0, Logan Hawkins came to the mound in relief.  Hawkins baffled Seattle Christian, striking out three batters and only allowing one earned run on four hits and one walk for the rest of the game.

Despite logging eight hits and five walks, the Pirates were just not able to string enough hits together to score. Ezra Lacina went 3-4 at the plate, Michael Bernheisel had two hits, and Josh Hruska Myer, Sam Schoenberg and Harper Whitney had one hit each.

“This is the second game in a row where we started out not pitching well and got down 0-7 after a grand slam in the second inning,” coach Steve Hall said of the season opener. “Logan Hawkins came in and did a great job of shutting them down for the rest of the game. The boys fought hard the whole way, but it was just too much for us to overcome that big early lead.”

In their second regular season outing, the Pirates outlasted and ultimately outscored Eatonville on March 21 after five lead changes, squeaking out a 6-5 win. While Eatonville was the first team to score, the bottom of the second saw the Pirates take the lead with a two-run home run by Jeremy Pilgrim-Stoppel. In the third inning with Eatonville ahead once again, the Pirates scored on a sacrifice fly by Ezra Lacina, scoring Simon Perrin. The Pirates took the lead again after an intense fifth inning, when a strong double by Harper Whitney scored Clyde Pruett and Logan Hawkins.

Eatonville tied it up again in the top of the sixth, but in the bottom of the inning, a long double by Lacina scored Hruska Myer to put the Pirates back in the lead. In the end the Pirates had 10 hits, with Ryan Bernheisel leading the offensive attack with three, Hruska Myer had two, and Lacina, Whitney, Perrin, Pilgrim-Stoppel and Chester Pruett all contributing one each.

Hruska Myer started on the mound going five innings, giving up three earned runs on seven hits with four strikeouts. Chester Pruett closed the game, getting the win for the Pirates.

“The boys bounced back against a very tough Eatonville team in a back and forth game,” Hall said the of the team’s effort in this game. “Josh Myer pitched a great five innings with Chester Pruett coming in after hardly any warm-up, doing a great job of shutting them down for two innings as well as some great defense. We had some big hits. Jeremy with a two-run homer, then a double by Harper to bring us back in the lead, and then Ezra had a huge double by that sent Josh all the way from first base to home to take the lead and hold on to win. A great team effort there.”

— Robin Hruska is the parent of a Pirate baseball player.