Redmond’s baseball season came to a close at the hot hand of Lake Washington’s Oliver Laufman.
The junior Kang twirled a no-hitter as his squad defeated the Mustangs, 6-0, in the 3A KingCo baseball tournament on Saturday morning at Bannerwood Park in Bellevue.
Redmond didn’t get a runner past second base during Laufman’s gem, in which he had four strikeouts and no walks on 76 pitches. LW committed three errors.
Redmond began the playoffs with a 3-0 win over Bellevue, lost 7-6 to Mercer Island and then faced LW in a loser-out game, which featured many solid Redmond defensive plays, including a Yui Suzuki diving catch in center field.
The Mustangs (9-13) gathered in left field following the defeat and spoke with head coach Dan Pudwill and his staff.
“At the end there, some of the seniors, we were kind of emotional, and coach was telling us what a great season we had. I think it really showed by making this playoff run. He was basically saying that it wasn’t about the last game, it was about the season we had pieced together,” said senior second baseman Nick Holt.
Freshman Colin Curry is one of the youngest players on the Mustang squad, joining the team in the middle of the season and serving as the designated hitter on Saturday.
“I really bonded with the team, I thought,” said Curry, who nailed a two-RBI single against Mercer Island. He added that he had a fun time playing on varsity.
Senior first baseman Hunter Sullivan echoed Curry’s thoughts and noted that the Mustangs are not just team, but a family as well.
“It really comes down to the tough situations where you gotta grind to get outta there and you really gotta work,” Sullivan said of the Stangs’ season. “It’s definitely gonna be a tough year to leave and it’s emotional.”
Holt said that playing as a team and delivering strong at-bats were crucial to putting wins on the board, but, unfortunately, he added, the hits didn’t arrive on Saturday.
“I think if you look over the season, that’s how we won, we would grind games out. It was a team effort, it was never one guy,” he said.
