We’ve reached the final two-week stretch of the 2025-26 prep sports season and the competition, like the weather, is heating up.
State tournaments for softball and baseball begin this week for SW Washington and for the 12 area schools – six in softball and six in baseball – their journeys to state championships open on Friday morning.
Carlon Park in Selah and Gateway Sports Complex in Yakima will host the Class 2A and Class 2B, respectively, state softball tournaments. For baseball, the road to either Selah or Bellingham begins on Saturday morning.
So let’s take a look at one question per program to think about over the next handful of days.
Baseball
Is Napavine going to break the D4 championship curse?
The old saying amongst SW Washington coaches is you never want to win districts, since it commonly leads to a short state tournament. Hard to argue with the evidence that stacks up against the current champion, Napavine.
Since at least 2011, only Kalama in 2019 and the Tigers in 2014 made the state championship game, but neither prevailed. Programs like Adna, Toledo, Toutle Lake and PWV have fallen short in districts, but claimed state titles or at minimum, trophy finishes.
The 2026 version of Napavine is attempting to end the curse and it gets – potentially – the rematch it has desired since March. If the Tigers and Liberty Bell win in the Round of 16, it will be a rematch in the quarterfinals that the Mountain Lions won via run-rule.
“We haven’t talked about the game itself, but we’ve talked about wanting to see Liberty Bell again,” Beckett Landram said before the season started. “We’ve talked about preparing for those types of teams.”
Cal Bullock and Layton Griffith are a top 1-2 duo on the bump and Landram has established once again as a premier leadoff hitter. Napavine has played a brilliant defensive postseason, spurred by Carter Edmonds in right field and Eric Bullock at second base.
If the Tigers seek a trip to Selah, they’ll need to continue playing how they have and attempt to right the D4 ship.
How does Adna utilize its four pitchers to get back to the Final Four?
There’s a case to be made that no area 2B team has the stable of pitchers like the Pirates. They’ve got a pair of lefties in Cameron Nakano and Jack Pennington, a high release point arm in Brody Richards and steady righty Eli Sliva.
It couldn’t be the reason they won the Class 2B District 4 title. Could it be the reason they find a way to Selah next weekend? It all depends on how head coach Jake Overbay puts it together.
The maximum number of pitches a player can throw in a day is 105. So theoretically, Adna can use all four arms in the Round of 16 and, should it prevail, the quarterfinal. All bring something different to the table.
Nakano has four pitches and can hit both corners of the plate. Pennington is fastball first and isn’t shy to blow it by hitters. Richards has the vertical break that makes his fastball and off-speed difficult to read. Sliva can come in and give a couple innings with his breaking stuff.
Adna is trying to snap a one-year hiatus from the Final Four. The arms were the reason for optimism back in March and likely will be at the forefront of whether the season continues into late-May.
Can the youth movement lead PWV to multiple upsets?
Kent Smaciarz said it best after the Titans beat league rival Ilwaco in the Class 2B District 4 tournament that clinched a state berth for the first time in nine years.
“We have no seniors, guys with virtually no varsity experience, and they are just dumb enough to keep on winning,” Smaciarz stated. “And keep on playing hard and competing, not knowing who we’re up against … I’m very proud of them.”
After the last handful of years of having senior leadership and top-two league finishes, the youth of PWV has it two wins away from the Final Four. Will that magic be enough?
Max Jarvis and Mauricio Morales have been the anchors of the pitching staff while eighth grader Kaeden Blain has established himself as one of the top young hitters in the area. Eddie Clements is a core varsity player and a roster with eight eighth graders and freshmen have fit like a glove.
The Titans would need to stun No. 4 Northwest Christian (Colbert) in the Round of 16 and then potentially take on Adna in the quarterfinals. Yet a dangerous team is a team with nothing to lose.
And no team could walk in and play more freely than PWV.
Why is Easton Singleton the secret weapon for Rochester?
The recognized names for the Warriors are hard to ignore. Outfielder/pitcher Ethan Rodriguez is an Idaho football recruit that’s been a key cog in their resurgence back to the state tournament. Tayden Martin has blossomed into the ace of the staff, fueled by his quarterfinal complete game and his seventh inning save in the winner-to-state game.
Tyler Huston at shortstop, Wyatt Dahl at catcher and some underclassmen sprinkled in have led Rochester to a place it hasn't been to in nine seasons. While head coach Brad Quarnstrom has praised the senior leadership, sophomore Easton Singleton could be the key for a trip to the Final Four.
How Quarnstrom uses Martin and potentially Singleton in the Round of 16 versus No. 4 Colville will be telling. The likelihood Singleton is used in relief and if the Warriors pull off the upset, would start the quarterfinal, is probable.
And how would his gas tank hold up? He let his control slip away in the winner-to-state start, but shoved for five innings. Martin is a known commodity and Singleton has emerged as of recent, leading to the potential for an upset should the latter perform at a high level once again.
Did W.F. West get the bad games out of its system?
It feels like the 17-game winning streak for the Bearcats is ancient history after what’s transpired recently. Not only did they drop the season series to their biggest league rival in Tumwater to be the No. 2 seed for the Class 2A District 4 tournament, they barely beat Aberdeen on senior night, did just enough to withstand R.A. Long in the quarters and went silent in the semis against Columbia River.
So are the bad stretches out of the way? Perhaps. Point to the game versus Ridgefield to stay alive in districts and two of W.F. West’s best hitters – Wyatt Hoffman and Connor Coleman – combined to go 0-for-7 with five strikeouts.
That’s an oddity compared to a regularity. Those two likely return to the norm in the state tournament. The pitching – spurred by Coleman, Hayden Rooney and Emmett Goodman – remains a powerful part of the Bearcats. For a program that expects to be in the Final Four yearly, it’s been two years since that’s happened.
Head coach Jesse Elam is banking on this stretch being a stretch of not excellent baseball, rather than the nail in the proverbial coffin.
Is Tumwater peaking at just the right time?
No team in Class 2A has put together a winning stretch of baseball quite like the T-Birds. Their 12-game winning streak and second straight district championship has head coach Lyle Overbay’s squad in prime position to end their own two-year streak of missing the Final Four in Bellingham.
Still, is it a case of peaking too early or just right when you need to? Baseball is a funny game that never knows who it will reward on a given day. Tumwater has been rewarded plenty with favorable bounces, stout pitching performances and clutch hits. Charlie Crawford was the latest to have good fortune, seeing his triple end up as the walk-off winner in the district title game after an error by Columbia River.
Braeden Konrad has looked more like his 2025 self with a pair of lights out performances on the bump. Add in the presence of Luke Overbay, Jimmy Womach and Liam Gustafson in the heart of the Thunderbirds lineup and it is a deadly combination for any 2A opponent.
Tumwater seemingly is on a path back to the state semis as the No. 2 seed, but a rematch with Port Angeles in the Round of 16 – the Roughriders won last year as the No. 11 seed – proves anything can happen.
Softball
How does Toledo go from underdogs to potential favorites?
For the last two years, everyone had to pretend the Riverhawks weren’t a threat since they were a double digit seed out of arguably the strongest district in softball. That turned out to be accurate since they’ve been to the semis and ended up leaving Yakima with the third place trophy last spring.
Toledo now gets the honor of boasting the No. 2 seed and potentially seeing its two biggest rivals in the quarterfinals and semifinals. And as the D4 champs, it could spell doom. Or recent history shows head coach Jeff Davis gets his group in tip-top shape for at minimum four, maximum six games.
It won’t be hard to view the Riverhawks as a team capable of going all the way. Peyton Holter continues to deliver clutch pitching performances and Brenna Carver has spelled her amicably through much of the spring. The lineup, like so many of the Riverhawks’ league and district foes, can explode for a crooked number in a hurry.
Toledo hasn’t won a state title since it was a 1A program, 25 years ago. It's been a scrappy underdog before and now, gets to see how the favorite collar fits.
Was the district tournament a two-day blip for Adna… or something more?
Hard to imagine a bigger story than the three-time defending Class 2B state champions needing to win a fifth-place winner-to-state game to even make it back to Yakima. In the grand scheme of things, the Pirates were fortunate to win their quarterfinal and even keep playing for the right to return to the state tournament.
Charlie Myers, the Wagner commit and C2BL MVP, struggled all weekend until she pitched a gem versus Forks. The Adna defense, which has been shaky at times, didn’t deliver. And other than the bookend games, the lineup was far from explosive.
Should there be concern in Adna? Or belief the issues will get fixed? History leads to the latter and shouldn’t need to go far to see it.
When the Pirates were run-ruled off the field in the 2025 district semis to Raymond/South Bend, all they did at state was piece together four straight victories and end up back on top. It’s just what longtime head coach Bruce Pocklington does, time and time again.
When Myers is on, there’s very few pitchers better. And when Hadleigh Gerard gets on base to set up the heart of the order of Tieander Olson, Alyssa Carroll and Khloe Hunt plus the bottom three hitters notch a hit or two, Adna remains difficult to beat.
Why not winning the district title was good for Napavine?
There’s a reason why a lot of coaches aren’t too upset about not winning the Class 2B District 4 tournament. More times than not, it equals a shortened stay in Yakima. Adna’s 2024 run of winning the C2BL, D4 and state titles was so rare, Pocklington figured it had been 30 years since the program pulled off the triple crown.
All it takes is one look at Napavine’s state tournament draw for the conclusion to come that perhaps finishing as the runners-up was not the end of the world.
The Tigers are on the opposite side of the bracket as the No. 4 seed, where they won’t see fellow D4 foes Toledo, Adna and PWV until a potential state title game. They would potentially have to go through east side powers Liberty (Spangle) and Freeman to even reach Saturday afternoon.
The duo of Dakota Lyons and Hannah Fay in the circle plus the lineup led by Hayden Kaut and Taylen Evander have boasted Napavine to an 18-3 record. It’s a group that played in several close games last season before bowing out on the last game of day one.
Add in not winning districts and it could be just what the doctor ordered for a deeper run.
For PWV, is it Barnum or Bust?
There’s two guarantees in life: Death and the Titans lineup mashing at Gateway Sports Complex.
For whatever reason beyond just rising to the occasion, PWV’s offense reaches scoring outputs very few teams in the Class 2B state tournament can match on a game-by-game basis. The last two years have featured 46 runs (2024, 12-team field) and 89 runs (2025, 16-team field). The context of the larger field plays a factor, but the numbers don’t lie.
Which is why starting pitcher Eliza Barnum is the key to a Titans state championship run.
It is no secret that a championship-caliber team is anchored by a stout pitcher in the circle. Barnum has shown numerous times she is an all-world arm in the circle, but she’s also succumbed to less-than-stellar outings. It hasn’t been all on her shoulders; in the losses to Adna twice, Napavine twice and Toledo, the PWV defense has registered multiple errors in those setbacks.
Still, it is a two-way street. The infield must clean up the miscues and Barnum has the talent to strike out opposing hitters and induce weak contact to her defense. Those two factors could make or break the Titans’ run in Yakima.
Will Rainier duplicate or better its 2022 run?
Glance back to the postseason four years ago and the Mountaineers run went first round win, quarterfinal loss, two loser-out victories and a fourth place finish. They would be rewarded with a double digit seed at state and a first round matchup with Liberty (Spangle).
Sound familiar?
It’s the same sequence of events four years later, down to the state tourney seed digit and first round opponent. Rainier boasted the Co-C2BL MVP in Bailey Elwell in 2022 and while it doesn’t have individual accolades this year, it's got the same trajectory of getting hot at the right time. That 2022 group made it to the semis before falling one win shy of a placement trophy.
Elaina Henry has been the ace in the pitching staff and the lineup with Layla Hill, Ryleigh Cruse, Mia Naval and others have been the catalysts of an offensive renaissance this postseason.
State tournaments always have a team no one expects to go on a run. Will 2026 be the Mountaineers time like 2022 was?
Rest and recovery the needed remedies for an extended W.F. West tournament?
It was evident the Bearcats gas tank was running on empty after the Class 2A District 4 tournament. This was all within the last two weeks of the season:
Far from being on cruise control. And could be a giant reason why Taylor Tobin struggled in the circle against Mark Morris in the district championship game and the lineup struck out 17 times versus Makenzie Henthorn.
From the end of districts to the first game at Carlon Park, it will be a week since W.F. West took the field. Tobin, already at 2,000 pitches thrown, could be the freshest she’s been in a while. That’s the biggest key for a deep state tournament run is how the junior handles her pitch count early. Plus, the offense has risen to higher levels and will play a vital role in giving their ace a substantial cushion.
