The Timberline baseball team will have to take the long road to the district tournament, as the Blazers lost to Gig Harbor 15-5 in five innings Monday to fall to the fourth seed in the Puget Sound League Nisqually Division.
Timberline will face Bellarmine Wednesday in the PSL tiebreaker at Lincoln High School with a district berth on the line. The Blazers defeated the Lions 12-5 April 29 in Tacoma.
Against the Tides on senior night, Timberline fell behind 3-0 in the second inning before the Blazers responded with a five-run bottom of the second. Blake Rickert got the rally started with an RBI single, and Jr. San Nicolas contributed a go-ahead, two-run single. Marley Gamble added an RBI single of his own.
Gig Harbor tied the game in the third inning with a pair of runs, and the Tides pulled away with six runs in the fourth and four in the fifth.
“The pitchers we had going have had a couple good outings, and we thought we could compete a little better,” Timberline head coach Doug LaPalm said. “The chance of possibly playing Wednesday was in the back of our minds as coaches considering Gig Harbor is a quality team, and if we did play Wednesday, we wanted our best pitching lineup for that game.”
Timberline finishes the regular season with an 8-11 record and 8-8 mark in the Puget Sound League. A win over Bellarmine Wednesday would mark the first trip to districts for the Blazers since 2024, as they didn’t qualify for the postseason last spring, but a loss would end their season.
