Fun year ends for Knights

DIXON -- With tears in his eyes and just about to get on a school bus, Alex Norman confessed he never thought he'd feel so upset after a loss.

Norman, the first baseman on Kaneland's baseball team, was one of almost a dozen seniors who played their last high school game at Veterans Memorial field, the place where Sycamore topped the Knights 6-4 in the Class 3A Dixon regional final Saturday.

"I didn't think I could get so emotional," Norman said. "(This year) was a lot of fun. It was a really good year."

Kaneland departed Dixon with a record-breaking season at 19-12, one up from last year's win total.

"It was tough saying good-bye to those guys," Kaneland coach Brian Aversa said of his seniors. "They battled until the end. It's a tough one."

This was the fourth time Kaneland and the Western Sun Conference champion Spartans played this season. The Knights won the final regular-season meeting and Sycamore won its third regional title. It improved to 23-9 and will advance against Rock Falls in the Rochelle sectional semifinal.

"We've had four conference titles and two regional titles before this, but none in the same year," Sycamore coach Jason Cavanaugh said. "We knew this wasn't going to be easy going through (Kaneland) again."

Western Sun Conference MVP Will Strack showed why he was so worthy of the honor against the Knights, as Sycamore's No. 4 batter hit a 3-run home run to left field in the bottom of the first and erased Kaneland's 1-0 lead. The Knights led off the first inning with a run driven in by Norman on an RBI walk.

Norman recorded his second RBI of the game in the third, when his single sent Brian Claesson home after the catcher led the inning off.

Sycamore, however, wasn't done scoring. It tallied 3 more runs off 3 hits, including an RBI single from Kyle Szychlinski and a crucial infield error Kaneland made that allowed two Spartans to score for a 6-2 lead.

The Knights, however, refused to give up. In the seventh inning they scored twice, thanks to Norman's fourth RBI of the game after his single sent Joe Gura and Mike Pritchard home after they recorded back-to-back walks to start the inning.

"Any time we are down at the end of the game, we are like hungry dogs," Aversa said. "You can't count us out yet. That showed at the end there."

"It could never be 1-2-3," Cavanaugh added. "They never go quiet. They are too good of a team to go quietly. There's just not easy outs in their lineup at all. We made it tough on ourselves ... we are lucky."

In the end the Knights weren't as lucky, leaving the bases loaded when the final batter grounded out.