Baseball: Prospect hoping for historic repeat after winning sectional

What a great anniversary present.

Prospect baseball coach Ross Giusti noted on Twitter recently that it was 10 years ago that his Knights were on their way to state after winning the supersectional.

On Friday, many of the players from that team were in the stands at Prospect High School as the current batch of Knights were trying to follow in those footsteps.

"We put it out on Twitter and my cellphone just blew up with those guys telling me they were coming back to watch us," Giusti said. "And our guys now, they've really done their history on that group from 2011. They want to be a part of that and follow what that group did."

It took some resilience and some magic, but Prospect ultimately gave their fans and their distinguished alumni that blast-from-the-past feeling. The Knights squeezed out a 4-3 Class 4A sectional championship win over Glenbrook South in front of huge crowd, one of the biggest crowds Prospect has ever had for a baseball game.

Prospect is now one win away from making its second trip downstate since 2011, when that team placed third in the state.

The Knights, who move to 22-7, will face Rockton Hononegah at 7:30 p.m. on Monday in the Wintrust Field supersectional in Schaumburg.

"We've all been looking at things from 2011, like their bracket and we saw that they won their first (tournament) game by a slaughter, just like we did, and they won their regional by 1 run, just like we did," Prospect infielder and pitcher Will Sommers said. "They also had some comeback wins and we have too. I feel like our team, we never get down on ourselves. We're always in the game and as long as we're out there playing hard. We have a chance to win.

"We're kind of taking the same route (as the 2011 team), it's kind of ironic."

Sommers played a huge role in the win. He started at second base but was called on to pitch in the top of the seventh to close out the game.

The Knights were up 4-2 at the time but Sommers inherited a runner on first base, who had walked. That runner, James Hackett, stole second and in the next at-bat, Matt Rosenberger drove Hackett in with a hard-hit single to right field.

That cut Prospect's lead to 4-3.

But then Sommers came up with 3 straight outs to end it.

"I love that stuff," Sommers said of the pressure situation he was in. "Adrenaline is running high. That's when I perform my best. I knew my defense had me."

Prospect got the offense from shortstop Brady Jensen.

He had the hit of the day in the bottom of the sixth when, with two outs, he drove in 2 runs off a hard-hit single to left field. Sommers and Cole Conner scored.

That gave Prospect, which was down 2-1 through three innings, a 4-2 lead.

"It's just relief," Jensen said of his clutch hit. "(Glenbrook South) had something going but we shut them down.

"We've been hot lately. We started off really nice, had a little dry spell, but we picked it back up, we're on a roll now and I think we have good mojo going."

Glenbrook South, which also had a huge fan section, believed in its mojo, too. The Titans were ready to turn that corner after Rosenberger's big hit in the top of the seventh.

"All year, we've come alive late when we needed to," Rosenberger said. "So we all believed we could do it again. We just came up a little short. We almost had it.

"It's pretty sad for everyone. I thought we could go pretty far."

The Titans, who were hoping to win their first sectional title in nearly 30 years (1994), finish the season with a 25-11-1 record.

"We missed a couple opportunities early with runners in scoring position," Glenbrook South coach Steve Stanicek said. "But I thought we swung the bats pretty well. To be honest, they had a guy who came up with a big, two-out hit and we didn't in our situations. But that's kind of baseball, and that's why they're holding the sectional trophy right now."