Batavia bashes its way to regional title

This year, the Batavia baseball team has been playing for more than the Bulldog on the front of their cap.

They've been playing for the DH on the side of it.

That's Denny Holm, the father of coach Matt Holm, who passed away just before the season started and whose initials are on the hats of all the players and coaches.

It explains why on Saturday, when Matt Holm was in the middle of talking to reporters about the Bulldogs' home run fest against Willowbrook - Batavia used three 2-run homers to turn a 6-5 deficit into an 11-6 win - senior Tim Drish interrupted to hand Holm the regional plaque.

"This is for pops," smiled Drish, as Holm took a few seconds to gather his thoughts.

"These guys have a lot of things they are playing for," Holm said. "It's been a magical season."

No. 3 seed Batavia (28-6) will continue that magical season at 4 p.m. Thursday in the Class 4A St. Charles North sectional semifinals against No. 7 Wheaton Warrenville South, who knocked off No. 2 Elk Grove Saturday, 11-8.

The Bulldogs won their seventh regional title, their first since 2006, after frustrating postseasons the past two years. They did it with a starting lineup of eight seniors who have been pulling for each other, and pulling for coach Holm. All of them went to Denny Holm's funeral, as did the players at the lower levels.

"I've been playing with all these kids since I was younger," Drish said. "Just great to see this for the eight seniors, and we've got so much potential coming up the next couple years too."

Brian Krolikowski (5-2) is one of those seniors. He went the distance, settling down after allowing 6 runs in 3 innings to shut the Warriors out over the final four.

The key was mixing his pitches after the Warriors (25-10) were sitting on his fastball early.

"Krolo pitched a fantastic game," Holm said. "Incredibly gutsy. Lot of adrenaline early. He was amped up and he was throwing everything. That's the first team we've seen pull his fastball, so we had to make an adjustment and he did a fantastic job doing that."

Krolikowski also had a big day at the plate, crushing a 2-run home run in the sixth, his seventh of the year.

"It was time to stay relaxed and stay confident in myself and my team did a great job picking me up the whole game," Krolikowski said. "When I'm down and they are picking me up inning after inning, getting hits, scoring runs, it is such a relief, it makes it easier to come back and pitch the way I did. We settled down and took it to them."

Down 6-5 in the bottom of the fourth, Drish put the Bulldogs back on top when he clubbed a fastball down the middle for a home run after a Willowbrook error.

"He made a mistake it, I made him pay for it," Drish said. "Felt good, especially to take the lead."

While the power was no surprise from Krolikowski and Drish, now with a combined 15 home runs, Schofield's 2-run blast in the fifth was. Batavia's leadoff hitter is batting .380 this year, but that was his first long ball - something Holm said could become more common if Schofield continues to turn his hips and drive the ball.

"I don't know where that came from," Schofield said. "I had no idea. I hit it hard and was just running to first and then I heard everyone cheering."

In addition to the three home runs, No. 8 hitter Tyler Lindquist had a big day at the plate with a double, triple and a couple RBI.

Brett Buchanan (5-3) took the loss for Willowbrook, who matched a school record with 25 wins.

Willowbrook coach Steve Gilliam thought a quick start would be extra important against Batavia, which the Warriors got with 2 runs in the first and 3 in the second. Batavia matched that with its 5-run first.

"Knowing Batavia, we had seen them a few times, they are a very energetic team, that's putting it nicely," Gilliam said. "What happened is if you can take that energy away a little bit, but they came back and put a 5-spot on us.

"We lost it on the mound. We made some poor pitches and they took advantage of it. That's a good team. They've got pitching, they've got hitting. if you make mistakes they are going to take advantage of them."