Baseball: Lake Park keeps it simple in win over Naperville North
Nothing flashy in Lake Park's baseball victory over Naperville North on Thursday.
All the Lancers did was flash the benefits of solid senior leadership.
A crisp, poised performance led Lake Park to a 4-2 DuPage Valley Conference victory over the Huskies in Roselle.
The Lancers (8-3, 5-1) do have a superstar player in Belmont Abbey commit Zach Aehlert, batting .485 with 4 homers and 20 RBI. Beyond their senior catcher, though, the Lancers are a balanced group thriving on getting the basics done right.
With nine seniors starting in the field, Lake Park committed no errors, was strong on the mound with starter Jay Palmer and reliever Ryan Behling, and seven players accounted for the team's 7 hits.
"Everybody played well," Aehlert said. "It's great when we play as a team like that. It's just great baseball. We just try to stayed dialed in and mentally focused."
Naperville North (6-4, 0-3), which also received a good outing from starter Jack Whitley in 4⅓ innings, scored a run in the top of the seventh on Whitley's pop-up infield single - the one misplayed ball by the Lancers.
The Huskies had runners on first and second with two outs and the go-ahead run at the plate, but Behling ended the game himself by snaring a grounder and firing to first.
Only three times have the Huskies scored more than 3 runs this season. They tried moving runners by bunting but couldn't execute, including once on a tough-to-bunt fourth-inning suicide squeeze attempt. The ball bounced away from Aehlert behind the plate but he recovered to tag out what would have been the tying run.
"We didn't execute early on in the game offensively," said Naperville North assistant coach Mark Lindo, filling in for head coach Carl Hunckler, who missed the game for personal reasons. "We're not scoring enough runs. That's not a secret. We're trying to make things happen, but we need to execute."
Lake Park added on throughout the game, scoring lone runs in the first, third, fourth and fifth innings. Paul Beverly, Aehlert and Thomas Ross had RBI hits.
Whitley and Cliff Vickers had a pair of hits for Naperville North. Palmer scattered 4 hits in 5⅔ innings.
"The recipe for us has been timely hitting, good defense and good pitching," said Lancers coach Dan Colucci. "We'll take it. We're a veteran team and it shows. That's a way to win a lot of games."
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