Cool finish for Mundelein
Caught from behind and by surprise, Mundelein baseball coach Todd Parola grimaced when he was doused in celebration Thursday with ice-cold water from a big, orange Gatorade cooler.
That was pretty much the only time all afternoon that anyone from Mundelein managed to cool off.
The Mustangs started off hot and stayed that way en route to an 8-0 victory over Vernon Hills in the North Suburban Conference title game.
The champions of the Lake Division, who move to 28-4 in winning their fourth title and first since 2008, put up 4 runs in the first inning and got a rock-solid performance on the mound out of pitcher Matt Langlie, who got his eighth win on the season. Langlie rolled up 6 strikeouts allowed just 6 Vernon Hills hits.
“There’s no better feeling in the world for a pitcher to get out to a 4-run lead in the first inning. I have to credit my offense. They gave me the confidence to go right at hitters the entire game.” Langlie said. “I was definitely pumped up. I was a little nervous because I’ve never pitched in a game this big before. It was great to come in here with an opportunity. I’m glad I made the most of it.”
Mundelein scored its first 4 runs on 5 hits, highlighted by an RBI triple by cadtcher Jordan Wiegold. He had 2 triples on the day.
“That’s never happened to me before, that was a great feeling,” Wiegold said. “This (win) means so much. We’ve put so much time and effort into this. From the winter to the spring. We put so many countless hours of work into this.”
Wiegold then scored again in the fifth inning after blasting another triple and then the Mustangs scored 3 runs over the final two innings, thanks in part to 2 straight triples and a double by Torr Randau, Will Farmer and Bryan Wiener respectively in the seventh inning.
“We’ve played pretty solid baseball all year, so these kids earned it,” Mundelein baseball coach Todd Parola said. “Our pitchers have thrown strikes all year, we’ve played really solid defense and we’ve been able to have guys up and down the lineup put it and play and move runners and make plays. We did that today.”
Meanwhile, Vernon Hills, which had beaten Mundelein during the regular season, had a tough time making many plays at all.
The Cougars (24-7) put 12 runners on base but could never find a way to get them home.
“They jumped out on us early and I don’t want to say that got us down, but it’s hard to come back after that,” said Vernon Hills left fielder and relief pitcher MJ Crowley. “You get yourself in a hole and it’s hard to keep the energy up after that.
“We had confidence coming in knowing we had beaten them already, but we know they’re a good team and knew we’d have to bring our best baseball today and we just weren’t able to get going. We got ourselves in a lot of good positions, we just couldn’t come through with that one key hit.”
Mundelein got plenty of key hits as Thomas Gandolfi (2), Wiegold (2), Randau (2), Farmer (2) and Wiener (2) all had multiple hits.