Kaneland snaps Raiders' win streak
Before Kaneland could become streak busters, the Knights had to bust out of a sluggish start Tuesday in their Western Sun Conference opener against three-time defending champ Glenbard South.
The Raiders scored in the first three innings and led 4-0 heading to the bottom of the fifth. A 2-out, 2-run double by Andrea Dimmig-Potts got the Knights on the scoreboard. They tied the game with 2 runs in the sixth, then scored the game-winner on a 2-out error in the eighth for a 5-4 victory.
The comeback win not only gives Kaneland (4-1, 1-0) a jump on Glenbard South (1-5, 0-1) in the conference race, it ends the Raiders' 33-game Western Sun winning streak.
"We weren't stepping up, and just that 1 hit and we all clicked as a team," said Mallory Huml, who was the winning pitcher and scored the game-winning run. "That's what we were waiting for."
Huml led off the eighth inning with a bloop single over the drawn-in shortstop's head. She was at second with two outs when Brianna Hurst lofted a pop into shallow left, and Huml raced in to score when the Raiders' left fielder and shortstop collided trying to make the catch.
"You can't want to finish a game like that any time on an error, but Kaneland came back and they battled," Glenbard South coach Julie Fonda said. "That's the type of team they are. We jumped out to a good lead and after that fifth inning we kind of relaxed and thought, '4-2, we're OK.' Hopefully in the future we can continue scoring runs and not stop after the third inning."
Huml finished 2-for-4 at the plate while allowing just 1 walk in 8 innings. She breezed through the final 5 innings, throwing 9, 11, 7, 5 and 6 pitches in those innings while allowing just 2 hits over that stretch.
"Huml moves the ball well, whatever she throws that hooks away seemed to be the pitch that was getting us to reach," Fonda said. "We'll adjust and hopefully learn from it and next time around it will hopefully be a different story."
Lauren Podgorski tripled to start the game for Glenbard South and scored on one of Kaneland's 4 errors. The Raiders added 2 runs in the second on doubles by Jenny Klich and Amanda Fazzari and another Kaneland throwing error.
When Kristin Grossman doubled home Jenny Wittenberg in the third, Glenbard South led 4-0 and looked like it would cruise behind starter Jess Wilkes.
"It looked like we were beat," Kaneland coach Dennis Hansen said. "We didn't have much energy and got a couple baserunners on and Potts had a big double that got us going. We just kept scraping. We didn't play real well but kept battling and found a way to win."
The Raiders lost for the first time in conference since Geneva beat them in Glen Ellyn in 2006. Glenbard South won 5 more games that year, then went 14-0 the past two seasons.
"We've talked about the bull's-eye is on our backs," Fonda said. "Teams are going to want to come out and beat us up. You beat a team that has gone 33-0 in conference, that's exciting and a great thing for Kaneland and hopefully we bounce back. We're a team that's still learning. We'll bounce back. It's kind of nice to have it off our back, and now we can just go and play ball."