LACEY — While the 2026 Timberline Blazers exited the 3A State Softball Tournament without a trophy, their run will go down as the second-best in school history and the best yet under head coach Lynsi Polanco.
The Blazers won three games at the Regional Athletic Complex this weekend, matching only their 2008 run to the state title game. After a lengthy opening day that saw the Blazers win two of three games Friday, fifth-seeded Timberline walked off to beat 14th-seeded Kennewick in a thrilling battle Saturday afternoon. But, needing one more win to guarantee a state trophy, the Blazers fell to fourth-seeded Roosevelt 10-5.
“We’ve talked a lot about finding their dog and grit and determination. The biggest thing here is they never gave up,” Polanco said of the state tournament trip. “If we were down, they didn’t care. They knew that we were better than that. Everybody coming together as a team is what got us this far.”
After playing 20 innings of softball across three games Friday, Timberline still had plenty of juice left Saturday morning against Kennewick. But before the Blazers could get their first swing of the bats, Kennewick opened up a 4-0 lead in the top of the first inning against starting pitcher Nevaeh Haagen.
The Blazers surged back in the bottom half of the frame, with each of the first six batters reaching base. In that spurt, Kayleese Dorfner put Timberline on the board thanks to an RBI single, and Haagen blasted the first pitch she saw over the fence in center field for a game-tying, three-run home run.
Senior Sophia Wiggs lined a 1-2 pitch to right field for a two-run single to give Timberline a 6-4 advantage, and through just one inning, the two squads had already combined for 10 runs and 10 hits.
The offensive explosion continued throughout the contest, as the Lions took a 7-6 lead in the third before the Blazers answered with two runs in the bottom of the third to jump back ahead.
Kennewick led by two on multiple occasions, but Timberline kept poking into the deficit. The Blazers broke through in the sixth after trailing 11-9, taking a 12-11 lead on an RBI single by Leovi Meno-Meyers.
Timberline thought it had just erased a bottom of the seventh inning and thought it would need three outs to close it out. But Kennewick’s Mayce Davis had other plans, scoring a runner from first base with an RBI double to tie the game in the top of the seventh. An error by third baseman Leilani Palacios on a grounder allowed the go-ahead run to come home, and suddenly, the Blazers were tasked with coming from behind in the bottom of the seventh to keep their season alive.
The pressure of leading off an inning under such circumstances might be threatening for most freshmen.
Brynnli Mayr does not fall under the category of “most freshmen.”
On the first pitch of the at bat, Mayr launched a no-doubt solo homer to left center field. As her teammates swarmed her at home, they chanted “She’s a freshman!” Mayr’s transcripts may say she’s a freshman, but her clutch gene in crucial moments this postseason is that of a seasoned upperclassman.
“We worked a lot on the freshman mentality because it’s always a little bit different. They don’t really know what to expect when we get here, handling the pressure,” Polanco said. “[Mayr] figured it out. When we played a couple of those tough league games, she saw that it is different, and I think she saw where she could fit in and really be that hero in a time when we needed her to be. She’s got that potential.”
First, it was the long ball that tied the game for Timberline. Then, it was time for small ball.
After Abigail Terry walked to lead off the seventh, Wiggs bunted down the first-base line and forced an infield error by Kennewick. With two runners in scoring position and no one out, Sophia Rodriguez laid down a perfect bunt back to the pitcher, and no throw was attempted as Terry ran home for the winning run.
The walk-off 14-13 win allowed Timberline to walk off of Field 3 and onto Field 4 for another elimination game, this time against Roosevelt. Once again, the Blazers fell behind early, but the hole was tougher to climb out of this time. The Rough Riders posted one run in the second inning before piling up six in the third. Defensive mistakes, a thorn in Timberline’s side all season, freed up multiple batters to reach base and kept the Roosevelt engine churning.
Timberline’s rally down 7-0 against Roosevelt was just as immediate as the previous game, not to mention louder.
Haagen crushed a two-run bomb well beyond the center field fence to cut the deficit to five for her second homer of the day. Two at bats later, Mayr hit her second homer of the afternoon, a solo shot to left field.
Later that frame, Wiggs and Rodriguez recreated their small-ball magic from the seventh inning walk-off against Kennewick. Once again, Wiggs’ bunt was muffed by the defense, and Rodriguez’s bunt back to the pitcher allowed Terry, the same winning runner from the last game, to score. In a blink, a seven-run margin was just three.
But after Roosevelt extended its lead with a pair of runs in the fourth, the Blazers couldn’t make a significant dent. They loaded the bases in the fifth inning yet couldn’t convert, and a seventh-inning home run by Haagen — her fourth of the state tournament and second of the game — wasn’t enough to spark a rally in the final frame.
Haagen enjoyed a remarkable state tournament at the plate. In five games, she finished 12 of 17 with four homers, 13 RBIs, two doubles, seven runs scored and four walks. She also pitched in every game, racking up a total of 23 strikeouts compared to just six walks over 13.1 innings.
“She always has an approach. I heard a comment on the field that was like, ‘That’s a grown woman.’ And she’s only a junior,” Polanco said of Haagen. “She’s only gonna get stronger. I don’t worry when Nevaeh is up at the plate. I trust her. She’s got good eyes. She’s got good plate discipline. She knows what she’s going after, and she goes after it.”
Timberline finished the state tournament with a 3-2 record and concluded the season with a 20-8 mark. The Blazers’ eight losses were all to impressive opponents, including three teams that went on to win a state title in 4A champion Skyline, 2A champ Mark Morris and 1A champion Montesano.
Two seniors, Sophia Wiggs and Leilani Palacios, move on from the program after four years with the team.
“They both bring joy, hard work and determination. Sophia keeps the kids on track, and she’s not afraid to dive in the outfield and come up big for a play. Leilani is so easy going and always has a smile on her face,” Polanco said. “She makes big plays at third, and that’s not an easy place to be. They’re some of the very few that I’ve had all four years because COVID kinda broke that up for some of them. They’ll always have a special place in my heart because I had them all four years.”
The Blazers will certainly be loaded again next spring as Haagen, the 2026 league MVP, will be a senior, along with Dorfner, Brookelyn Read and Meno-Meyers. Porsha Miller and Mayr will also be back to lead a team that will indubitably be hungry for hardware in 2027 after getting a taste of a deep postseason run in 2026.
