Baseball: It's a Senior Day feast for victorious Cote, Libertyville
Chairs and tables with orange tablecloths were neatly set up just outside the Libertyville baseball stadium.
Tons of picnic-type food was stretched from one end of a long rectangular table to the other.
Burgers and other goodies were cooking on the grills.
It was Senior Day at Libertyville on Tuesday and the post-game destination for players and their families was just about as impressive as the Wildcats were on the field.
Fittingly, a senior led the way for Libertyville in its 8-1 drubbing of visiting Zion-Benton in North Suburban Conference action.
Starting pitcher Ryan Cote had a perfect game going through 5⅓ innings and had Zion-Benton totally stymied. He gave up 3 hits in the sixth inning to break up the perfection, but by then, the game was well in hand for Libertyville.
The Wildcats, who had already clinched the North Suburban Conference title earlier in the week, exploded for 7 runs in the second inning.
Libertyville is now 27-6 overall and 18-2 in the North Suburban Conference.
"That was pretty good," Cote said of almost getting a perfect game/no-hitter, which would have been the first of his career. "I knew if I threw strikes that my teammates would make plays for me and they did.
"Of course, I was (thinking about a potential no-hitter/perfect game). But it is what it is. The main thing is that we got the win. It didn't really matter."
What did matter was that Cote's teammates gave him the comfort of a huge cushion.
A total of 13 batters for Libertyville came to the plate in the second inning. Catcher Jackson Petersen got the scoring started with a double in the second at-bat. That brought in Nick Angel, who started the inning with a walk.
Trent Jean, Ben Land Ryan Greenberg and Dan Marks also drove in runs for the Wildcats.
"Their kid (Cote) just pitched a really good game for them," said Zion-Benton coach Daryl Bellows, whose team drops to 5-22 overall and 3-17 in the NSC. "They just really hit the ball in that second inning. They are aggressive, they swing the bats. They do a great job of not over-swinging and they use the whole field to put the ball in play and sometimes at the high school level, that's all it takes to make it happen."
Libertyville got its other run in the third inning when Brant Kym drove in Luke Plunkett, who got on with a double.
Zion-Benton broke up the no-hitter and the shutout in the sixth inning. Ryan Green got that first hit with a single and eventually scored the Zee-Bees lone run.
"It was nice to have a 'perfect-o' going into the sixth inning when it got broken up," Libertyville coach Matt Thompson said. "But that's OK. Ryan pitched really well. That's what he's looked like most of the year. Consistent throwing strikes, keeping guys off-balance.
"It wasn't the plan to have Ryan pitch for so long. We were going to get some other seniors in there earlier. But when you've got a perfect game going, you've got to go with that."