South Elgin rallies past Dundee-Crown
Something about Dundee-Crown pitching turns South Elgin senior Kenny Lowden into a power hittter.
And something about playing on Dundee-Crown’s field turns South Elgin baseball caps into rally hats.
The Storm trailed the Chargers 5-2 entering the top of the sixth inning in Carpentersville Thursday, but Lowden changed all that with two outs. He tied the game with a no-doubt-about-it, 3-run home run to left field, and Robbie Green subsequently walked and scored the go-ahead run on a double by Nathan Garris.
Junior left-hander Ryan Ford did not allow a hit in 3 scorless innings to make the 6-5 lead hold up for a nonconference victory for South Elgin (4-0).
Lowden now has 4 varsity home runs in two seasons, 3 of which have come against Chargers pitching. He smacked 2 home runs in the same inning against Dundee-Crown last year.
So was the longball on his mind when he stepped to the plate with the game on the line?
“I don’t know, I talked to a couple of people before the game (about it),” Lowden said. “My mindset was maybe home run more than it would usually be.”
The comeback victory on Dundee-Crown’s diamond continued a trend for the Storm, who won a regional title on the same field last spring despite trailing Streamwood 12-2 three innings into the championship game.
“It must be something with this field,” South Elgin coach Jim Kating said, shaking his head. “I thought we hit the ball pretty well today. We were squared up and we hit a lot of balls right at people and they made plays.
“The first two innings we ran ourselves into two double plays, we missed some signs, we made some mental mistakes. We did not play very good baseball. We were very fortunate to get this one.”
Dundee-Crown (2-3) starting pitcher Tyler Gross left with a 5-2 lead. In 4 innings he held the Storm to 2 uneared runs on 6 hits, including a double and a triple by South Elgin’s John Menken. But the Storm did most of its damage against junior reliever Erik Brewer (0-1), particularly Lowden.
Eric Stazy allowed 2 earned run in 4 innings for South Elgin before giving way to Ford (1-0), who retired eight straight before issuing a walk to Jake Romano with two outs in the seventh. However, Ford struck out Nick Spagnola with Romano in motion to end the game.
“I think it’s a learning experience,” Dundee-Crown coach Jon Sawyer said. “It’s frustrating because I thought we played pretty well for five innings, but you’ve got to play seven innings. We didn’t really pitch very well the last few innings and we didn’t hit the ball real well the last few innings. We kind of shut down offensively.”