Baseball: Barrington stays on track, clinches in MSL West
It came up boxcars for Barrington.
The Broncos tallied 6 times in the third inning to cruise past Palatine 11-4 on Wednesday in Barrington.
The win gave Barrington their sixth consecutive Mid-Suburban West baseball title and moved them into the MSL title game next Thursday against East Division winner Buffalo Grove.
It's the first time in Barrington's storied baseball history that the Broncos have won 6 division titles in a row.
"It's never been done," said a smiling Barrington coach Pat Wire. "I was talking to Kirby (Smith) and he complimented me on that. I am really proud of what we have accomplished."
Barrington (19-4-2, 13-1) needed to rally from a 4-0 deficit to get there.
Palatine (18-11, 9-5) jumped on the Broncos early, scoring 2 runs in the first and third innings.
Jack Hopper singled home a run in the first and later scored on Jake Andersen's double. Hopper scored in the third inning on a fielder's choice by Andersen and TJ Skelnik, who had 4 hits on the day, later scored on Brent Penrose's groundout.
Barrington, which gave up 6 runs in an inning on Monday to Palatine thanks to 4 errors, turned the tables on the Pirates on Wednesday. The Broncos scored 6 runs thanks to 4 Palatine errors, a walk and a hit batter.
"I thought we did some nice things early on and advanced the score," Palatine coach Paul Belo said. "It was timely errors by us. That inning hurt, and we did not seem to recover from there."
The Broncos did bang out 3 hits in that inning, with David Mitchell delivering a 2-run single.
"Each guy tries to step up," Wire said. "That is the beauty of this team. We have depth, where a lot of other teams don't."
The pitching depth showed in the later innings, when RJ Nowicki came on in relief in the top of the fourth. The sophomore allowed just 1 hit during the next 3 innings as Barrington added to its lead.
"It was a tougher spot, but the defense was able to bail us out with a double-play," said Nowicki, who fanned three. "Our offense came through and that helped. I was never nervous. I just thought about throwing strikes. That's all I had to do."
Barrington increased its lead when Mitchell belted a double, driving in Tyler Acosta, who had walked, to make it 7-3.
"We came out a little flat in the first couple innings," Mitchell said. "We came back strong with our bats. We did a good job of changing our approach today."
Acosta came up with the final blow for Barrington in the fifth.
The speedy center fielder, who will play at State College of Florida next season, belted a towering 3-run home to right-center to make it 10-4.
"It was just a good day," said Acosta, who had a single, double and drove in 4 runs.
"We had a chip on our shoulder coming into this game. I just wanted to try to spark the guys. That big inning of ours really helped."
Barrington closed out the scoring in the sixth on an RBI single by John Seagrest.