Soundview Little League wins state, prepares for regionals

Published 4:54 pm Tuesday, August 4, 2026

Mark Landry has been a figure in Federal Way baseball for a long time, in a space where he’s hard to find. As the head coach of Lakota Middle School for nearly 20-years, Landry has seen the development of hundreds of baseball players and now has a front row seat to Soundview Little League team who just won the Washington State Little League Majors tournament.

“It’s been a really cool thing, it’s been three years in the making for these guys,” Mark Landry said in a phone interview with the Mirror on Aug. 3.

Landry is an assistant coach on the Soundview team, which is based out of North East Tacoma, and he coaches his son Tyler on the team. After double dipping Gig Harbor Little League in the championship games (5-0, 4-1), Landry and Soundview are now state champions.

Soundview is heading to San Bernardino, CA to compete in the Northwest regional tournament for a chance to play at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. But to get to San Bernardino, it has taken a heroic effort from a group of thirteen 12-year olds to get through the loser’s bracket and avenge a couple prior losses.

Before even getting to the state tournament, Soundview didn’t allow an earned run in the District 10 tournament. They are led by a trio of lefties on the mound who have been dominant on the bump; Frankie McCabe, Winston Weaver and Paxton Hanson. Another pitcher, Kasen Workman, was the ace on the younger teams that fell short of the mark and as a supplemental piece shows how deep this Soundview team is.

“We pretty much ran through that pretty good. Once we got to state it was a pretty good test,” Landry said.

Soundview lost to Gig Harbor Little League in the second round of the tournament which sent them to the loser’s bracket. From there Soundview went on to win three straight games to reach the championship where they met back up with Gig Harbor.

But in the consolation bracket, that is where Soundview’s bats came alive. Soundview scored nine and 11 runs before meeting up with Richland in the semifinals.

“We got more production out of everybody rather than relying on just our pitching and that is definitely what carried us over. That is what clicked in the Lake Stevens game, for sure,” Landry said.

A team battling the heat, a team that had played four games was one game away from the championship. The team that stood in their way was from Richland, the team that had beaten them in the 11-year old state championship the year before.

Soundview beat Richland 5-2 in a game that Landry described as an emotional victory.

“We knew what we had in them and had that game circled as a really big one too,” Landry said. “That’s a team that had beaten you before, the intensity was there for us and for them. They had our number.”

The little league from Browns Point was then tasked with Gig Harbor, a team yet to lose in the state tournament and a team that had shut out Soundview three games prior.

But Landry said his team found their groove at the plate in the consolation bracket and they did just that. In game one, Soundview won 5-0 shutting out Gig Harbor for the first time in state.

In the first game against Gig Harbor, the 3-0 loss, Landry said Gig Harbor looked like the better team from the moment they dropped their bags off in the dugout. But in the championship, Soundview came with a different energy, a championship level energy.

“The infield/outfield we took against Gig Harbor was the best infield by far. Everybody was locked in, it was just the snowball effect that started it all,” Landry said.

Tyler Landry had dealt with an arm injury throughout the past calendar year. Landry has coached baseball for Tyler’s entire life, but not necessarily coaching his son along the way.

“It’s very cool, it’s been surreal. I have been coaching baseball for so long, then having a child and have him play baseball. That is really cool to see, you know I’m pinching yourself every once and a while,” Landry said.

Soundview will take on Oregon in the regional which is a round robin tournament style, with a one game championship. The teams are the following: Oregon (Bend North LL), Idaho (West Valley LL) and Alaska which has yet to find a winner.

Little League pays for flights and hotels of all players and coaches once teams reach the regional round and then whichever team comes out of each respective regional heads to Williamsport.

It’s a double elimination tournament, but once the championship is decided it is a one game, winner-take-all game.

Soundview opens up the tournament with Bend North on Aug. 8 at 6:00 with the game airing on ESPN+. Landry will get to name his favorite baseball player, who is of course Ken Griffey Jr.