Baseball: Mt. Carmel trips up Montini

For the second time this week, Montini squared off against one of the best teams in the state.

But this time around, just two days after upending top-ranked St. Laurence, the Broncos suffered a much different result.

Knocking out four home runs, Mt. Carmel cruised to a 17-1 win over Montini in the Chicago Catholic League crossover matchup on Wednesday in Lombard.

"They are excellent," Montini coach Rich Janor said, "and it was one of those days for us where nothing went right. It's high school kids and high school baseball. Sometimes things like this happen."

The Caravan jumped out to a 2-0 lead after the opening inning and then added seven more in the second inning, with a grand slam by Christian Lucio the big blow. Lucio also started on the mound for Mt. Carmel (15-1) and worked four scoreless innings.

A 3-run homer by Zion Pettigrew followed in the third before Alek Thomas and Bobby Seymour connected for homers in the fourth.

The visitors knocked out 12 hits but were also helped by 7 Montini errors.

"You know they are going to hit the ball all over the place," Janor said, "but we have to control what we do. We have to play a cleaner game."

The home team got on the scoreboard in the fifth with an RBI single by Nicolas Malik, which knocked in Ryan Nelson.

Cooper Hynes, Matt Pestel, Trevor Young and Alex Luka also had hits for the Broncos.

Montini (8-9, 3-4) was coming off a 5-4 win over previously undefeated St. Laurence on Monday. The Broncos also beat St. Rita before that.

"We had been playing very well as of late," Janor said. "I thought we came to the ballpark ready to play, but it was just one of those games. We play an aggressive schedule and that is what we want. We went down to Florida for our spring trip and played some really good competition. And know we are running the gauntlet with these CCL Blue crossover games."