Thomas Jefferson’s route to the state playoffs isn’t the one they were hoping to take.

They opened the West Central District tournament with a match against the top-seeded Puyallup Vikings. What they were hoping would turn into an upset and a state berth instead ended up being a 10-0 victory for the Vikings and the 400th career victory for their head coach, Marc Wiese.

Luckily for Jefferson, the loss didn’t mean the end of their playoff run.

They topped Kentlake 6-1 on Wednesday night to earn their way to a winner-to-state, loser-out playoff game against Timberline on Saturday.

After Kentlake took an early 1-0 lead, Jefferson took control of the game.

A two-out rally, kept alive by two fielding errors on Kentlake, led to the Raiders tying the game in the bottom of the third. Blake Null shifted the game in Jefferson’s favor with a double to deep right-center field, scoring two more runs to take a 3-1 lead.

Jacob Swanson, who was 2-for-4 on the night, added two more runs on a single in the bottom of the fourth to push the lead to 5-1. They added another run in the bottom of the sixth for insurance.

“I know without question these guys are going to fight and battle,” said Thomas Jefferson head coach Joseph Townsend. “I’ll go to war with these guys any day. I’ll take these guys over any 20 guys in Washington state any day. Win, lose or draw, they play together.

“Those guys on the other side are a great club,” Townsend continued. “That pitcher threw well today. They made a couple of mistakes that cost them a little bit, but it was a great game. We’ll come back at it Saturday against Timberline and we’ll roll the dice and see if we can make it to state.”

Jefferson and Timberline will square off at 1 p.m. on Saturday at Heritage Park in Puyallup. The winner will advance to a seeding game at 4 p.m. against the winner of Tahoma and Emerald Ridge for the fifth and sixth seeds to the state tournament from the West Central District.