Stevenson's Kingery returns and shows he's king of the hill

Stevenson senior Greg Kingery came back to pitch after being out three weeks with a biceps injury to lead host Stevenson past Lockport 5-2 in a nonconference baseball game Saturday.

Shortstop Kyle Ruchim supplied the offense for the Patriots with 3 hits, including his eighth home run, an opposite-field shot with the bases empty in the bottom of the first inning.

Stevenson improved to 25-3, rebounding from Friday's North Suburban Lake loss to Lake Zurich, while dropping Lockport to 19-12.

"Right now (Ruchim) is our offense," Stevenson coach Paul Mazzuca said. "He had a great day (Friday with a homer and double) and we lost because we did not play a complete game. Today, our defense was real sharp."

Kingery threw 5 innings, giving up 1 run and 7 hits, while striking out four to improve to 3-0.

"It was nice to come out here and get a win after being hurt for three weeks, " Kingery said. "My fastball was working, my changeup and curveball were working, and my location got me through the day."

Brian Boyle pitched the sixth for Stevenson and Blake Fiedelman shut the door in the seventh for the save. Each pitcher benefitted from a double play.

"We have a real deep pitching staff," Kingery said. "It's nice to have two, three, four relief guys behind you if you're having trouble or have a rusty arm."

Kingery ruled and so did his defense. In the Lockport fourth, Patriots left fielder Alex Daar threw out a runner trying stretch a single into a double.

Then in the sixth, with a Lockport runner leading off first base, Stevenson third baseman Mike Martin fielded a groundball and fired to second baseman Teddy Heiser, who threw to first baseman Patrick Wilson to complete the double play.

The Patriots closed out the game with a Ruchim-to Heiser-to-Wilson double play.

"I'm getting good feeds so it's easy to turn (the double plays)," Heiser said.

Heiser also contributed 2 hits and finished with 4 putouts and 3 assists.

"A lot of work in the off-season, just fielding groundballs," Heiser said of his defense. "We got a new drill this year throwing (baseballs) off the wall to work on the hops."

"We won the game with pitching and defense," Mazzuca said."Kingery, Boyle and Fiedelman made big pitches when they needed to, and we turned those key double plays."

Ruchim's 3 hits hiked his batting average to .480.

"I've been trying to focus on the entire game and not just the home runs," Ruchim said. "We've been scoring a lot of runs, but the main thing is that we have been errorless every game."

Lockport's Mike Hamilton took the loss. After he gave up 4 runs in the first inning, he settled down.

"When you're playing a good team like this that plays outstanding defense and has some nice pitching, if you give them a 4-spot to open up the game, you're going to have a hard time coming back," Lockport coach Steve Stanicek said.

"The one thing that (Stevenson) did a nice job of was they strung a lot of hits together in that first inning. It wasn't like we played bad defense. They were just swinging a nice bat."