Disney trip magical for Grayslake Central

It was a magical start to the season for Grayslake Central. Literally.

The Rams spent another spring break in Orlando, Fla., home of Disney World’s Magic Kingdom.

Grayslake Central has made the trip for the last five years and came back undefeated for just the second time. The Rams were 3-0 at Disney’s Wide World of Sports while playing teams from all over the country.

“Our pitching and defense were outstanding down there,” Grayslake Central coach Troy Whalen said. “We played good teams. We had good weather. That’s the reason we go down there.

“It’s a challenge every year getting the trip organized and setting up all the fundraisers, but I couldn’t imagine not going. And I know the kids would be disappointed, too. It’s such a great experience.”

Whalen says his planning for the spring break trip begins in July, nearly nine months beforehand.

The Rams do multiple fundraisers each school year, including the sale of holiday wreaths and team media guides filled with coupons to local businesses. The players also conduct 50/50 raffles during other sporting events at school.

“We had some kids do so well with their fundraising that they didn’t pay a thing to go on the trip. And no kid paid more than $450, and that includes airfare, meals, five nights in a hotel and a three-day hopper pass to the parks,” Whalen said. “It’s a lot of work leading up to the event, but it’s well worth it.”

Looking for a winner: Grayslake Central graduated two pitchers from last season who accounted for nearly half of the team’s 30 wins.

Matt Murphy, who is now at Southern Illinois, went 10-1 on the season while Mitch Tielke went 4-2.

Talk about a big void to fill.

The Rams thought they had found a partial answer in junior Mark Ash. But a preseason illness has left him a step or two behind.

“We have a lot of talent on the mound, but we entered the season even more unproven than we thought we would be,” Grayslake Central coach Troy Whalen said. “We consider Mark a frontline starter, so to have him out and battling back from an illness is tough for us.

“We will literally be pitching by committee for awhile as we get guys experience and we get guys healthy.”

Senior Austin Leggett and Mark Gawinski return as the most experienced pitchers for Grayslake Central. Both earned 3 wins last season.

After that, the rotation is wide open with Whalen hoping to get contributions from newcomers such as Andrew Formica, Christian Edwards, Brian Karol and perhaps even infielder Derek Idstein, who starts at second base for the Rams.

“Derek is a really good pitcher, but normally, I don’t like pitching my middle infielders too much,” Whalen said. “But with the way things have started this season, I think Derek is going to get some innings for us.”

Hitting a wall: It’s tough to win baseball games when you’re not hitting the baseball.

Just ask Lake Zurich coach Gary Simon.

His team is 2-6 and is struggling to make contact at the plate. On Wednesday against Mundelein, the Bears managed just 2 hits in an 11-0 loss.

And in their six losses, they are averaging just 1 run a game.

“We just aren’t very consistent on offense,” Simon said. “We’re not hitting the ball very solid and we have some guys who are having trouble with their swing.

“We work with them on that every day.”

Simon and his assistant coaches have gone high-tech on their players.

They feel the best way to teach new techniques is by showing exactly how the old techniques don’t work.

“We videotape our players at the plate, swinging the bat,” Simon said. “You can tell someone until you’re blue in the face about a flaw in their swing or some other problem. But sometimes, they don’t really, really get it until they see it.

“We’ve made a lot of progress with guys when they are able to watch video of themselves and then work from there.”

Sick time: There’s never a good time to get the flu, but for Lake Zurich coach Gary Simon, his bout with it came with extremely bad timing.

The Bears’ annual spring break trip to Missouri had just begun.

“It hit me so hard,” Simon said. “It was like a vampire had sucked the blood out of me. I felt awful.”

But at the time, something made Simon feel really wonderful.

“My players were just incredible,” Simon said. “They were so concerned, they were so kind. They tried to do anything they could to help out. They were telling me not to worry about anything.

“And parents came to see me and check on me, too. It was nice to see how really great everyone was when I was having such a hard time. I really appreciated that.”

Deepest of depths: No coach likes to make cuts.

But sometimes, not making cuts can be more of a strategic move than a sympathetic one.

At Carmel, coach Joe May kept every pitcher who tried out this season, which means he has 14 on the roster. Normally, teams carry eight or nine pitchers.

“We just felt we had a lot of very good pitchers,” May said. “We won’t have enough innings for all of them, but we didn’t want to cut someone who showed us enough that we felt with some work this season they could really help us out next year. We’ll get all those guys a lot of practice time.”

May said that he made sure each player understood his place on the totem pole setting the roster.

“We didn’t want anyone being surprised (by not getting any innings),” May said. “But at the same time, you also never know what might happen. We classified guys into three categories: projected starter, projected sub and projected developmental player. But you never know when guys will move up and down between those categories because of injuries and other things. The nice thing is, we have that depth at pitcher and we can use a lot of different guys if we need to.”

Carmel has three veteran pitchers returning in Tim Hendricks, Daniel Mooney and Adam Warkenthien. But the Corsairs could get help from any one of the 10 juniors who were kept on the roster.

Minimizing mistakes: Antioch’s Achilles heel last season was a tendency to make silly mistakes. Those silly mistakes often led to errors that produced runs for the opposition.

In starting out 5-2, which includes Wednesday’s big victory over Vernon Hills, the Sequoits have already shown that they are determined not to let history repeat itself.

“One trend that really gives me a lot of hope for this season is that we are playing so much better defensively than last year,” Antioch coach Paul Petty said. “We have seven returning varsity players. I told our guys before the season, ‘I expect more out of you guys. You all have experience this year. We shouldn’t be giving away runs because of errors.’

“The great thing is, we’re definitely not doing that as much this year.”

It helps that the Sequoits have stacked two of their best players at key positions. Paul DeJong, who will be playing baseball next year at Illinois State, is back at shortstop and catcher Joe Gregory started last year as a sophomore and is much more comfortable behind the plate this year.

“Our guys seem to be much better at understanding the speed of a varsity game now,” Petty said. “Our experience on defense is going to be a key to our team this season.”