Elgin still winless after doubleheader against South Elgin

Elgin is going to win a baseball game one of these days, but Saturday was not the day.

The Maroons took leads of 3-0 in Game 1 and 4-0 in Game 2 of an Upstate Eight doubleheader at South Elgin, but the Storm rallied to win 9-5 and 7-5 to improve to 9-9 overall and 6-5 in league play.

Elgin (0-16, 0-11), which has lost five 1-run games, committed a total of 10 errors, walked 14 and left 24 men on base.

"It needs to come soon," said Elgin senior Tom Roth, who finished the day 6-for-8 with a walk and 4 RBI. "We just really can't take much more of this. We're in pretty much every game. It's just heartbreaking to lose. The ball's gotta fall our way one of these times, right?"

The ball did fall Elgin's way in the sixth inning of Game 2, when the score was tied 4-4. With runners on first and third, senior Tyler Loiseau smacked his third line drive of the game. Whereas his first two liners were hit right at infielders, his third fell for a clean hit to center field to score the go-ahead run with two outs.

"My first two at-bats I had two hard line drives, but I really didn't put them in the right spots," Loiseau said. "The last one felt good off the bat. Thank God he didn't come up with that one or you would have seen my crying."

"We left a lot of people on base in that second game, so it was nice to come up with the big hit," Elgin coach David Foerster said. "Too bad it didn't hold up."

South Elgin rallied for 3 runs in the bottom of the sixth to take its first lead of the game. No. 9 hitter Brad Zych drew a walk from reliever Adam Jazwiec and advanced to second base on a sacrifice bunt by Brandon Stevens. Zych took off for third on a wild pitch and scored the tying run on a throwing error by the Elgin catcher.

A walk and a basehit later, Kyle DeRoo delivered a 2-run triple to the base of the center-field wall, giving South Elgin a 7-5 lead.

"We were having a rough game in the beginning, and we slowly fought back," DeRoo said. "I think the emotion got to us in the end and really pulled us through."

Storm reliever Kyle Kinyon (2-0) earned the victory. He entered in the third inning trailing 4-0 and held the Maroons to 1 run on 6 hits in 4 innings.

"Our energy was low and we were taking them for granted," Kinyon said of the slow start. "But Elgin's a scrappy team. We just kept playing our game. We knew sooner or later we were going to break through."

Jake Toppel earned a 1-inning save. After loading the bases, he escaped when Roth lined out to right field to end the game.

In the opener, Drew Buddle knotted the game at 3-3 in the second inning with a two-out, run-scoring double down the right-field line. Chris Ciccone drove in Buddle with a single to center that gave the Storm the lead for good. Senior Brett Huisman (2-2) earned the win.