In Fife baseball's late playoff push, senior pitcher Spencer Willhite left it all out on the mound: 'He’s given everything he has'
CHEHALIS, Wash. — Spencer Willhite approached the Fife baseball coaching staff in late April with news. The senior pitcher and multi-sport standout had made a final decision about his future. And college baseball wasn't going to be a part of it.
"He said 'coach, I’m not playing baseball next year so I’m giving everything,’ " Fife head coach Shane Nixon said. "We said 'alright, you’ve got the ball.' That’s all we needed from him."
Willhite delivered. He went for complete game outings and stayed around 80 pitches in his last three starts and led Fife (14-8) on a late-season surge into the Class 2A playoffs. That run ended Saturday in a 1-0 loss to Ephrata in a regional opener at W.F. West High School.
He threw 81 pitches and gave up six hits, no earned runs, a walk and struck out three. The right-handed senior was a stabilizing force for a team coming off of a 2A state title appearance the last time playoffs were held (2019), yet replaced a lot coming into this year and didn't quite know what it was capable.
Since Willhite was a fixture on Fife's basketball team, he wasn't able to fully prepare his arm to be the team's day one starter on the mound — a position Nixon said was the team's biggest question mark before the season.
The Trojans lost 5 of their first 8 games and rallied for a fourth place 2A South Puget Sound League finish. They entered the 2A District 2/3 tournament as the 6-seed and beat Sammamish and Enumclaw to punch its regional berth before taking No. 1 overall seed North Kitsap down to the wire in a 7-6 loss in the district title game.
In that game, Willhite pitched a complete game.
"He’s just been a workhorse, he’s given everything he has," Nixon said.
There's a resolve about the 2021-22 Trojans that Nixon tried to summarize when giving his team its end-of-season speech Saturday afternoon.
"Talk to me five games into the season, I’m thinking we’re struggling to make the playoffs," Nixon said. "By the end of the season it was continued work, effort and attitude and got to a place where I feel like we’re underrated."
Scroll to the top of the post to watch an interview with Willhite.
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--Andy Buhler; @AndyBuhler.
