CHELAN HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS SHORTS – WEEK OF MAY 23

Courtesy Chelan Goat Baseball FB

The Chelan High School boys baseball team traveled to Yakima on May 27 and 28 for the 1A State Baseball finals. They lost their first game 5-4 on Friday, and played for third place on Saturday, and came home with a 4th place trophy.

Courtesy Chelan High School GolfCarson Clinton, day one of the tournament - exactly where is he hitting it?

Courtesy Chelan High School Golf

 Joey Gasper chipping up to green - note the slope.

Chelan Golf

Submitted by Coach

Kirk Einspahr,

Chelan High School Golf

May 24

SPOKANE - The two Chelan boys who qualified for state both shot 7-over par 78s today and qualified (top half, or 30 golfers) tied for 9th for tomorrow’s final day at the State 1A Golf competition.  Both Joey Gasper (senior) and Carson Clinton (8th) had some close misses and felt they could have scored even better, but they have put themselves into good positions to bring home some personal awards tomorrow.

The day started out for the boys very foggy and with them basically teeing off blindly and the rules official asking if they really wanted to do this in the fog!  They kept at it, and it finally burned off around the 5th hole, and the golfers had a nice sunny day the rest of the way.

Unfortunately for our only girl in the tournament, Arabelle Finch (sophomore), she was not able to qualify for day 2 after shooting a 114, but learned some valuable lessons for next year when (I’m sure!) she will qualify for state again. She only missed the “cut” for the second day by 4 strokes.

In addition to the fog today, we were also “serenaded” by some wild turkeys that call the course and surrounding woods their home, even taking liberties to “strut their stuff” across the fairways, golfers or not!

May 25

No fog today.  In fact, it was overcast but mild with a couple very short sprinkles and the sun even broke out just as the players were finishing a playoff for the number 1 state title, as well as the team number 1, as two players tied with 140 for the two days.

The course today by all accounts played much more difficult with some crazy pin placements on the greens.  Actually, I’m not sure there were any good pin placement possibilities on some of the greens - the greens were probably the toughest part of this course (along with a few trees).The great news is that senior Joey Gasper, after a frustrating front 9, came back with some steady play to finish with a 76 (two better than Tuesday) for the second day and placed him in a tie for 7th overall.  Great job Joey.  Carson Clinton also had his problems today, mostly with some frustrating putting throughout the entire 18, but still finished with a very respectable 81 for the day, putting him in a tie for 11th overall, and he’s just an 8th grader. Wow, what a future ahead for this young man.

And finally, to get a chance at a team trophy you need to have at least two players make it to the second day - which we did, and you get points for where each player finishes.  Chelan was able to come away with the 4th place team trophy for the boys team.  It’s a bit hard to compete with schools that have three or more players make it to the second day, which all three of the higher placing teams had, but Chelan was very well represented by Joey and Carson and that trophy is due to all their hardwork - a well-deserved end to a great season and state competition.

My personal thanks to each of you who has kept up with our team’s exploits this season.  I know it’s difficult to impossible to be at the many spring sports that happen all over the place, and I hope these reports have filled in the gaps and perhaps even made you a silent supporter of Chelan Golf - and we’re glad to have you.

The Spring Sports Awards (Dessert Banquet) was held on Tuesday, May 31.

Chelan Tennis

Submitted by

Marty Rothlisberger,

Chelan High School tennis

May 28

Chelan had three participants in this year’s WIAA state tennis tournament:  senior singles player Nate Harding, and the doubles team of senior Alexis Williams and junior Arden Paglia.

Nate entered the tournament as the #1 seed from District 6 after winning CTL Player of the Year for the regular season, winning the CTL Tournament and the District Tournament.  In the opening round on Friday, Nate defeated fellow CTL representative Charlie Lyons of Cascade 6-2, 7-5.  That placed Harding in the quarterfinals against Soren Ghorai of Eastside Prep. Nate played some of the best tennis of his high school career, but was defeated by the eventual 2nd place finisher 6-0, 6-2.  In a loser-out/winner medalist match on Saturday morning, Nate faced Kyle Dillingham of Lakeside (the eventual 4th place finisher), and narrowly lost a heartbreaker 3-6, 7-5, 6-4.  Based on his performance in that match and the unfortunate nature of his draws, we’ve awarded Nate an unofficial 4.1-th place.

Ally and Arden had an opening round match against the Overlake tandem of Taiya Hansen and Sadie Wickham.  Overlake just barely edged our Chelan duo 6-4, 6-4, and eventually placed 3rd in the tournament.  Williams and Paglia are a talented doubles team who would have likely medaled given the opportunity.  However, unlike the boys tournament, for no rational reason the girls’ tournament this year was loser-out in the first round.  Feel free to send the WIAA constructive feedback regarding their chosen tournament format at WIAA.com.  Based on their performance against the eventual 3rd place finisher, Ally and Arden also unofficially medaled in 3.1-th place!

I’m proud of our season, where both the girls and boys teams won CTL titles, our girls won the district title, and our athletes played at the highest level during the state tournament. 

Thank you to Nate, Ally and all our other seniors for a great spring!  I’m already looking forward to an outstanding 2023 season for our returning athletes.  Go Goats.

Chelan Baseball

May 27-28

The Chelan High School boys baseball team traveled to Yakima on May 27 and 28 for the 1A State Baseball finals. They lost their first game 5-4 on Friday, and played for third place on Saturday, and came home with a 4th place trophy. No other stats were available at press time.