Huskies swing into 3rd

SELAH – After an opening-round loss to No. 12 seed Olympic, the No. 5 Othello Huskies rallied off five-straight wins to take home a third-place trophy at the 2A State Softball Tournament over the weekend.

Othello notched its second-straight top-three finish with an 8-2 win over Aberdeen in the third/fourth-place game on Saturday at Carlon Park.

“Our thing here is when we make it to state, our goal is to take state,” Othello Head Coach Rudy Ochoa said. “If for some reason we get beat, we go to a secondary goal and that’s place as high as possible. We already had that in mind, and the girls took it to heart.”

Olympic led the Huskies 3-2 through the first four innings, but a six-run top of the fifth allowed the Trojans to pull away and ride out to an 11-3 win over the Huskies.

“We really thought we were in the game, until that fifth inning where they really took off,” Ochoa said. “There’s really no explanation, it just happened. We had people on base, we just couldn’t score them. Hits weren’t coming when people were on base.”

Othello started its run through the consolation bracket with a matchup against a familiar opponent, the No. 4 seed Selah Vikings. Selah had knocked off the Huskies in the Central Washington Athletic Conference district title game a week and a half before the two squads met at the state tournament, but Othello was able to move on with an 8-7 win despite a late Viking rally in the bottom of the seventh.

Another one-run win followed, with Othello holding off No. 2 seed Sedro-Woolley 11-10 in the second round of the consolation bracket.

“The girls, more than anything, they played as a team going into the consolation (bracket),” Ochoa said. “It was a whole team effort.”

The win moved the Huskies to day two of the tournament, where they defeated No. 11 Cedarcrest 9-7, No. 13 Enumclaw 5-2 and No. 10 Aberdeen 8-2 in the third/fourth-place game.

“I think a lot of teams give up if they know they’re not going to get first, but the girls all came together and they worked hard,” Ochoa said.

Throughout the season, players practicing at multiple positions allowed the Huskies to navigate the daunting task of playing six games in three days.

“In those close games where we have to move pitchers around, what we do is they all know how to play more than one position,” Ochoa said. “Probably like two or three different positions, and we practice that daily in practice so that when it comes to their turn, maybe to have to go to third base where they haven’t played in a while, but they have practiced it and go there with no worries.”

Once the tournament came to an end, Ochoa was honored with a ceremony commemorating the end of Ochoa’s 27-year career at the helm of the Huskie softball team.

“I wasn’t expecting anything like that at the state tournament,” Ochoa said. “It was nice of them to do that.”

Ochoa thanked fans, players, fellow coaches, his daughter Cynthia Garza and everyone along the way who helped make the past two seasons of Othello softball memorable.

“(I’d like to) thank the fans and the parents for everything – the way they’ve supported the team through the year, the two years that this group has been together,” Ochoa said. “They’ve been a big part of it. And also all my coaches – I think I had a very good coaching crew.”