Arcadia swept by Panthers to end Coulee play

The Arcadia baseball team’s season-high four-game winning streak came to a screeching halt when they found themselves on the wrong end of a conference sweep to finish up Coulee play for the spring.

West Salem (8-12, 7-5 Coulee) outscored the Raiders (6-16, 4-8) 12-2 across their two games last week, solidifying each’s final placement in the 2026 conference standings. The sweep allowed the Panthers to finish with a winning Coulee record and claim sole possession of fourth in the standings, with Arcadia three games behind them in solo fifth.

Arcadia is a No. 10 seed in the Division Two playoffs and will travel to face No. 7 seed Adams-Friendship in the opening round on Thursday. The winner gets the second-seeded Aquinas Blugolds in Tuesday’s regional semifinals.

W. Salem 5 Arcadia 0

Arcadia could only scrounge together two hits in a shutout loss to the Panthers last Monday in West Salem.

Both hits for the Raiders came in the top of the fourth, with Ben Lightfoot and Carter Wegman each singling. Even though they had runners at second and third with one out, they failed to capitalize on that scoring opportunity.

Despite only having two hits, Arcadia did have at least one baserunner in five out of seven innings but were unable to push any runs across.

The highlight of the evening for West Salem was Luke Grube’s three-run home run in the bottom of the fifth.

W. Salem 7 Arcadia 2

A strong night at the plate from Max Blaschko wasn’t enough for the Raiders last Thursday at Parker Hagg Field, as they fell into a big hole and couldn’t climb out of it.

West Salem built up a 7-0 lead through four innings of play and maintained that advantage until the bottom of the sixth, when Arcadia finally got on the board thanks to Blaschko’s solo blast to left.

Wegman and Carson Wozney followed with back-to-back singles to put runners at the corners, and Wegman came into score on an Austin Hughes sac fly. That was all the further the potential Raider comeback push went.

Blaschko finished the evening 3 for 3 at the plate, including his headlining homer.