An early-season showdown for high school baseball supremacy in the 1A Evergreen League was a draw between Eatonville and Hoquiam last week. The teams gave each other their first conferences losses of the 2016 season. Eatonville blanked the Grizzlies 2-0 on March 28, and Hoquiam turned the tables with an 8-2 victory the next day. The first showdown was a pitching duel, won by Eatonville's Colin Streich, who pitched a complete game against last year's 1A state champions. Streich only allowed one Hoquiam batter to reach as far as third base, and behind him, an errorless defense helped hold an explosive Grizzlies offense to only five hits on the day. Streich didn't walk any batters and struck out eight to earn the shutout. The Cruisers were facing the ace of the Hoquiam pitching staff in junior Skyler Jump, who pitched his team to the state title in the finals a year ago. Jump was on his game against Eatonville, striking out seven batters in four innings of work. But he made a first-inning mistake against A.J. Goetz, who hit a 3-1 fastball over the leftfield fence for a two-run home run to score Jake McCormick and give the Cruisers a 2-0 lead. That would be the extent of their offense, as they were only able to muster three more hits on the day. But it was enough. In the teams' rematch March 29, Hoquiam's bats came out in force. Hoquiam took advantage of two Cruiser errors in the first inning for one run, and tacked on two more runs in the third inning on three base hits. Eatonville finally broke through in the bottom of the fourth when McCormick led off with a walk and eventually scored on a single to centerfield off the bat of Joel Rodriguez. The Grizzlies then broke the game open in the sixth inning. They exploded for four runs to push their lead to a commanding 8-1.
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