Baseball: West Aurora storms back to beat Glenbard East

After staging late-inning rallies to no avail in the first two games of the 3-game series, West Aurora's baseball team began its comeback a little earlier against Glenbard East Thursday afternoon.

Trailing 4-1 after 3 innings, the Blackhawks (4-7-1, 2-2) sent 13 batters to the plate during a 10-run fourth on the way to an 11-5 Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division victory over the Rams (11-6, 2-1) in Aurora.

The inning began innocently enough as designated hitter Jacob Lipscomb (3 for 4) reached on an infield single.

After a walk and fielder's choice, Cody Wyeth laced a 2-run double to right-center, trimming the Rams' lead to 4-3.

Two batters later, an RBI single by Oscar Acevedo tied the contest at 4-4 and an infield throwing error on a grounder off the bat of Logan Love allowed Ryan Becker to score the go-ahead run for the Blackhawks.

Lipscomb delivered a 2-run single during his second at-bat of the inning, and Connor Palmby's RBI single upped the Blackhawks' lead to 9-4.

Wyeth added his second 2-run double a few moments later for his third and fourth RBI of the inning.

"Both were fastballs," Wyeth said of his extra-base hits. "I just wanted to hit them hard somewhere and have quality at-bats."

"This group does a nice job of continuously fighting," said West coach John Reeves. "This time, we fought and it worked out for us."

With ominous clouds approaching and the game still not official, Reeves also began fighting Mother Nature.

He purposely waved Wyeth around second base and into the third out at third base to end the bottom of the fourth inning.

"All of a sudden, it (the temperature) dropped like 15-20 degrees," said Reeves. "Obviously with the weather coming, I started thinking we need to get three outs here (in the fifth).

"It would've ticked me off to do all that work and have to come back and finish it tomorrow."

Rams coach Joel Pelland figured the Blackhawks would keep battling.

"They've been doing that all series," said Pelland. "They've battled no matter how much they've been down. We couldn't seem to get that last out. We kicked the ball and threw the ball around a little bit, too. We just have to play better."

Senior pitcher Trevor Hannan improved his record to 3-1 with a distance performance that included a season-high 10 strikeouts.

"He did a nice job closing it out," Reeves said of Hannan's back-to-back strikeouts in the seventh inning.

Phil Abruzino's 3-run double highlighted a 4-run third for the Rams, who were unable to complete the 3-game conference sweep.

"You want to come out and get the sweep but you know the other team is not just going to lie over," said Pelland. "They got the job done today."