St. Charles North outlasts Bartlett
Bartlett and St. Charles North were not scheduled to meet in one of the four crossover baseball games Upstate Eight Conference teams play each season, but they got together on Friday anyhow.
Fortunately for host Bartlett, St. Charles North's 14-9 nonconference victory didn't hurt the Hawks' first-place status in the UEC Valley.
In a battle of teams that entered with a combined record of 19-5, the North Stars snapped a 2-2 tie with a 3-run fifth inning and added 9 more insurance runs before settling for a the victory.
"This is a nice win for us, but it didn't feel very good at the end there," St. Charles North coach Todd Genke said. "We have to compete until the 21st out. Hopefully, we just learned a lesson."
Bartlett (10-3) scored 6 runs in the bottom of the seventh to make the final score respectable.
"It was a great game for five innings, then the doors kind of swung wide open and we lost the edge," Bartlett coach Chris Pemberton said. "But we came back in the last inning and still hit the ball."
Kansas State-bound Cory Wright was the catalyst for St. Charles North (11-2). The senior went 4-for-4 with 2 doubles, a triple, a walk and 5 runs scored.
"He's been struggling at the plate a little bit, but I saw him five times today at third base so that's a nice feeling," Genke said.
Wright, a 6-foot-1, 170-pound left-handed hitter, drove in North's first run in the third inning with a triple, but his next at-bat in the fifth was more crucial. He led off with a hit that deflected off the hand of Bartlett starting pitcher Alex Curtis. As the ball died in the outfield grass, Wright turned on the jets around first base and slid safely into second ahead of the throw from center field for a hustle double.
"Just trying to make a hustle play," Wright said. "That's what I do and I took advantage of that."
Wright scored on Kyle Novotney's subsequent RBI single, which gave the North Stars a 3-2 lead.
Sophomore Tyler Mettetal then stepped to the plate and belted a 2-2 curveball from Curtis approximately 380 feet to center field for a 2-run home run and a 5-2 St. Charles North lead. It was his first varsity homer.
"I was expecting it," Mettetal said of the curve. "After they tried it three times already in that bat I was like, 'He's going to come back with it.' He left it over the plate and I crushed it. It felt pretty good."
Bartlett, 6-0 in the UEC Valley after sweeping 3 UEC Valley games from both West Aurora and East Aurora, answered in the bottom of the fifth with a solo home run by Cameron Mays to draw within 5-3.
That was the last run allowed by North starting pitcher Christian Sidoti (1-0), who notched the victory by limiting the Hawks to 3 earned runs on 7 hits and a walk. He struck out 3.
The North Stars scored 4 runs in the sixth and 5 more in the seventh to take a 14-3 lead.
Tripp Paris doubled twice in 3 at-bats and drove in 2 runs, and Michael Pfaender went 2-for-4 with 2 RBI for Bartlett.