By Jeremy Martin

Wednesday afternoon was a beautiful day for baseball, but for the Chief Sealth Seahawks the result of a rivalry game against West Seattle wasn’t quite as pretty.

An 8-3 Wildcat victory gave West Seattle High School something to celebrate and some much warranted momentum heading into the second half of the rivalry matchup on Friday.

It took a while for the Wildcats to find its groove, not registering a hit until the fifth inning, but once the bats warmed up nothing could cool them down.

West Seattle went on a tear starting with a double in the fifth and not stopping until it had racked up six hits in the final three innings.

“We played a good team, their tough, their pitcher had our number for our while. I’m proud of our guys because they hung in there and it’s a seven inning game so it was nice that we stayed with it and kept playing good defense,” West Seattle head coach Velko Vitalich said.

It was all Sealth early, as the Seahawks scored in the first inning and were able to pick up five hits before the Wildcats even found first base.

“We had control of the game for the first four innings then we made a couple defesnse mistakes. We settled down and got back into it, but in the end of the day errors cost us this game,” Chief Sealth head coach Ernest Policarpio said.

However, by the time the seventh inning rolled around, West Seattle had not only mounted a comeback but had taken a commanding 8-1 lead.

The Seahawks had no interest in going down without a fight though, and picked up two hits, two runs and a hit batsmen in the last half of the seventh.

“We teach our kids to finish every single game, regardless of what the score is. We got hot real quick then their pitcher did a good job of settling us down, Policarpio said. “The great thing about rivalry games is you get two chances to face off, so our kids will be ready to go on Friday.”

Vitalich too said his boys will be up to the challenge of taking on its rival twice in one week.

“They have to come to our place, and we’ve got a little bit of momentum,” he said.