Baseball: Walker's clutch hit lifts South Elgin over St. Charles North
Fighting the flu bug earlier in the week, Adam Walker was starting to come around Saturday.
The South Elgin senior made himself and his teammates feel much better after delivering a clutch 2-out, 2-run double in the top of the seventh inning to help lift the Storm (3-2, 1-0) to a 3-2 Upstate Eight Conference crossover victory over St. Charles North (5-2, 1-1) in St. Charles.
Walker, who was robbed of a 2-run base hit in the first inning on North Stars junior center fielder Tommy Nelsen's diving catch, earned a measure of revenge in the seventh when he smacked a 1-2 pitch over the head of Nelsen to snap a 1-1 deadlock.
"That was in the back of my head," Walker said of his first-inning at-bat. "I was looking for some kind of redemption and I wound up hitting it over his head."
Walker was just happy to be back on the field after the week's events.
"It's definitely good to get back for this one," said Walker. "This is real big - it's our first conference game."
"I'm proud of our kids," said Storm coach Jim Kating. "We've only been on the fields when we've had games. We haven't had a practice on our field yet.
"The way our pitching came through today and clutch hitting - a lot of great things happened today against a very good team."
South Elgin junior pitcher Nate Gomez (2-0) earned the victory with 6 quality innings, allowing 1 run on 4 hits with 3 walks and 8 strikeouts.
"They're a good club," North Stars coach Todd Genke said of the Storm. "Obviously, Gomez is one of the better pitchers in the area. We had a lot of opportunities. We had the bases loaded with one out and we didn't execute. We also had a runner on third and nobody out and couldn't get a run in.
"That's where you have to tip your cap to him (Gomez) - he made some quality pitches when he needed to."
Senior reliever Jack Stancl also made a few quality pitches when he had to, throwing back-to-back off-speed deliveries on 3-1 and 3-2 counts, inducing a 1-6-3 double play grounder to finish the game.
"When we're at home, we should be able to scratch a few more runs home and put more pressure on them," said Genke. "It was very well-played defensively on both sides. We made some great plays in the outfield to preserve the score the way it was."
In addition to Nelsen's superb catch, the North Stars silenced South Elgin rallies with Tyler Mettetal's diving catch in left-center and Nelsen's gun-down of a runner at the plate following Bryant Diel's fourth-inning single.
"I was glad they were running on that because he (Nelsen) had nine outfield assists last year as a sophomore," said Genke.
St. Charles North used 4 pitchers - Bennett Christiansen, Nick Skurka, Christian Erickson and Tim Hasto.
"We're still trying to figure out what guy is going to be in what role," said Genke. "We're still learning just like everybody else. These are quality games that you want to play."