Baseball: South Elgin downs Hampshire for 1st win

High school baseball games are often won by the team that gets the big hit or turns in the strong pitching performance.

Just as often it comes down to which team makes fewer mistakes.

Unlike in losses to Fremd and Buffalo Grove in which South Elgin made 10 errors combined, the Storm committed a lone error in Wednesday's 9-3 nonconference win at Hampshire

South Elgin (1-2) even took advantage of a few mistakes by the Whip-Purs (3-2-1), the third inning being a prime example.

With the score tied 2-2, South Elgin's Nate Gomez and Kevin Barry opened the inning with back-to-back hits. Passed balls on consecutive Hampshire pitches allowed Gomez to score the go-ahead run while Barry took third.

The next batter, 6-foot-4 junior Jack Watkins, bunted. The throw from Hampshire sophomore starting pitcher Logan Nespor was high and pulled the first baseman of the bag for an error as Barry raced home to make it 4-2.

The Storm added another run in the fourth inning, 3 more in the fifth and another in the sixth, collecting 10 hits compared to 5 for the Whip-Purs.

"It was nice, yes, to get the bats going," South Elgin coach Jim Kating said. "It was nice to get some baserunners on and take advantage of some mistakes and compound that and not make mistakes today."

Hampshire's 3 errors led to 4 unearned runs.

"We're hanging in there until we make more mistakes than the opposition and that seems to be our trend right now, making more mistakes," Hampshire coach John Sarna said. "Obviously, when you play a good team and you make more mistakes than they do, they're going to capitalize. The next thing you know you're in a hole. We don't have enough talent to come out of a hole like that. We have to play mistake-free baseball and we didn't do that."

The Whips managed single runs in the second and third innings against South Elgin starting pitcher Jack Stancl (1-0) and another in the seventh against junior reliever Matt Sweitzer but it wasn't enough. Stancl held the Whips to 2 runs (1 earned) on 2 hits. In 4 innings, he struck out 4 and issued a walk. Sweitzer limited Hampshire to an earned run in 3 innings and struck out 3.

"I wanted to be nice and smooth, throwing strikes because I knew the defense was behind me," said Stancl, who struck out the side in order to open the game. "I tried working on the changeup. That's what was really working for me."

South Elgin broke the game open with a 3-run fifth. Catcher Zach Saunders delivered a 2-run single after failing to bunt the runners over.

"Both of them went foul," Saunders said of his bunt attempts. "Then on the third pitch he kind of left a curveball kind of low so I put everything I've got into it and it got out to the outfield."

Gomez capped the scoring for the Storm with his first home run of the season, a sixth-inning solo blast over the left-field wall through a crosswind.

"I just got a low, inside pitch, barreled it up and the wind did the rest, pretty much," Gomez said.