Baseball: Harvest Christian nails down first regional championship
High school baseball programs can go years without winning regional championships, decades even.
Then there's too-young-to-know-better Harvest Christian Academy, which won the Class 1A Westminster Christian regional title Saturday in its second season of varsity competition.
The Lions - with a lineup composed of sophomores and freshmen with the exceptions of seniors Chad Jakel and David Ritchie - defeated Christian Liberty Academy 14-10 by exploding for 10 runs in the third inning to overcome a 7-3 deficit.
"Even when we were down, we were confident that we weren't going to lose this game," Harvest No. 3 hitter Joey Pepper said. "We knew we were going to win it as a team and take the momentum into sectionals."
Harvest Christian (19-12) advances to the sectional it hosts next week at Judson University in Elgin. The Lions will face No. 5 Walther Christian (11-22) in a semifinal on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. Walther Christian defeated No. 1 sub-sectional A seed St. Francis de Sales 16-2 in 5 innings on Saturday to win the regional it hosted in Melrose Park.
Midway through three innings in Elgin it looked like the Lions might be headed home instead of sectional play. Though they answered Aiden Miller's 2-run, first-inning home run with 3 first-inning runs of their own, Christian Liberty (10-15) seemingly took charge with a 4-run third to forge a 7-3 lead, keyed by a 2-run single from No. 8 hitter Nate Stenzel.
Harvest Christian then raised the ante on rallies in the bottom of the inning by erupting for 10 runs on 7 hits, 4 walks and 2 errors to take a 13-7 lead. The Lions sent 15 men to the plate. Two of them - left-handed freshman Brock Wilken and sophomore Drew Lewis - collected 2 hits in the inning.
"We had everyone pulling on the same rope," said 6-foot-3 freshman catcher Jack Nohava, who hit one of Harvest Christian's 4 doubles in the inning.
The rally made a winner of Wilken (5-1), who relieved starting pitcher Zach Pawelek with one out in the third and recorded two outs to get out of a jam. In 3⅓ innings of work, the 6-1 lefty held the Chargers to 2 earned runs on 2 hits and minimized the damage from 4 walks with 4 strikeouts.
The Chargers scored twice in the sixth inning to draw within 13-9 and scored another run in the seventh to pull within 14-10, but it wasn't enough to overcome Harvest's bountiful third inning.
Still, the No. 7 seed in sub-sectional B acquitted itself well by knocking off No. 4 Westminster Christian on its home field on Thursday to qualify for its third Class 1A regional final in four years.
"After (ace) Chris Hoffman hurt himself 6 game into the season, it took us awhile to put things together and play well," Christian Liberty coach Jed Bennett said. "I'm proud of these guys for pulling it together to pull the upset of Westminster Christian the other day. The goal is to put yourself in position to win championships and we did that. We just ran out of pitching."
The Chargers were led offensively by leadoff man Peter Grob, who went 3-for-5 with 2 extra-base hits. Aiden Miller went 2-for-3 with 2 RBI and Ben Law finished 2-for-3 with a double and a walk.