St. Francis' patience rewarded with trophy
Put St. Francis on a baseball field and give the Spartans a chance to play. That's all they wanted.
So when coach Nick Hall got a text at 7 a.m. Saturday that the Class 3A third-place game was being postponed to that afternoon from 9 a.m. because of expected bad weather and the IHSA's desire to get the state championship games played first, he didn't sweat it. He just got his boys to Silver Cross Field in Joliet at 11:30 a.m.
And when that turned out to be too early still, the Spartans rolled with it again.
"We had to sit through (the second game) and it wound up going through to another extra-inning game," Hall said. "I just told our guys to be ready to roll and we were finally ready to roll and we had another rain delay for a half-hour. It's a testament to these guys to what they've done all year. They've always been ready to play."
The Spartans found the wherewithal to come from behind twice and end their season with a 5-4 win against Morgan Park (25-14) to claim the state third-place trophy. The game was shortened in advance to five innings due to impending storms. Highland defeated Nazareth 7-6 in the Class 3A championship game.
"They did a really good job today of what we didn't do yesterday," Hall said of Friday's 2-1 semifinal loss to Nazareth. "Executing the small things. They were getting guys over. We stole a couple of bases, took the extra bag, threw a lot of strikes today."
Morgan Park used its speed to score twice in its half of the first inning, but the Spartans (27-10) responded with 2 runs of their own in the bottom half. The Mustangs stole nine bases in the game.
"I was just trying to be as quick as possible," said Spartans catcher Brett Whelton, who cut down a runner in the third to end any threat before it got started. "I knew I just had to put it on the bag in hopes we could put a tag on them. But, yeah, they were quick. I got some help from our pitchers with their slide step."
Designated hitter Jason Sullivan and left fielder Will Purdom scored on Whelton's single to tie the game.
Morgan Park took the lead a second time in the second inning when catcher Michael Hawthorne came in from third base on Jonathan Hodo's single to left.
Again St. Francis tied the game, Sullivan scoring in the third inning thanks to a pair of Morgan Park errors.
"We had kind of a bitter taste in our mouths from the game yesterday, missing some small things," Purdom said. "Every time they put some runs on the board we wanted to match it or put some more on so we could end up being on top. We seemed to do a good job of it. Every time they got up we came back firing."
St. Francis gained its first lead of the game in the fourth inning. With one out right fielder Mike Beach singled and went to third base on first baseman Foster Heise's single to center. Beach scored on a wild pitch, and Anthony Bucaro, pinch running for Heise, scored on Tim Lilly's single to left for a 5-3 lead.
The extra run came in handy when Morgan Park's Christian Bullock singled, stole second and third and scored on a groundout. A strikeout ended the game.
Junior Colin Wisted (5-0) got the victory in relief of senior starter Theo Lamperis.
"Theo Lamperis hadn't pitched in a while because Jason had been pitching so well," Hall said, "so he came out of the gates a little rusty, but he's been a great starter for us, a really good senior arm that we've used a lot."
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