Jacobs 2, Dundee-Crown 0

Jacobs baseball history was made Thursday.

With two outs and a runner on first in the bottom of the seventh, Class 4A regional host Dundee-Crown was still searching for its first hit against Jacobs lefty Ryan Lesner.

At the plate stood right-handed hitter Ben Rodriguez, the Dundee-Crown starting pitcher, who himself had allowed just 2 runs on 8 hits in 7 innings of work.

Lesner delivered and Rodriguez rifled a ball toward the left-center field gap that looked like trouble. Jacobs left fielder Kyle Magnuson immediately bolted to his left in pursuit.

"Off the bat I didn't think I was going to get to it," Magnuson said. "I thought it was going a lot further than it was."

However, the liner began to dive and Magnuson dove with it, making the catch as he fell forward to seal the first no-hitter of Ryan Lesner's career and sealing the 2-0 win for the Golden Eagles, who will play Crystal Lake South Saturday for the regional title. Jacobs has never won a baseball regional championship.

Not an overpowering pitcher, Lesner struck out two and walked five. But he was effective because he spotted his fastball between well-located changeups and curveballs that kept the Chargers guessing.

"All my pitches were working today," said Lesner. "I just tried to keep them low. We've played them (three) times. They just weren't hitting low pitches. They were trying to pull everything so I just pitched away, got them to hit groundballs and the defense helped a lot."

The victory ended a five-year playoff drought for the Jacobs baseball program, which hadn't won a postseason game since coach Andy Jakubowski's Golden Eagles defeated McHenry 4-2 in a Class AA Prairie Ridge regional semifinal on June, 1 2003.

"Ryan made it easy," first-year Jacobs coach Eric Sanders said. "I just stayed out of his way."

Lesner not only pitched a no-hitter, he also drove in the only 2 runs of the game for Jacobs (14-14).

In the third inning Matt Igara doubled to the left field corner with two outs and Lesner followed with a wicked one-hopper that skipped off the mound and into center field to score Igara for a 1-0 lead.

Lesner protected that 1-0 lead on the mound for the next four innings, retiring 11 in a row at one point.

He gave himself a little breathing room in the seventh inning when his sacrifice fly to left field scored Johnny Amann to establish a 2-0 lead.

D-C leadoff man Eric Barber drew a walk from Lesner to open the seventh, but a flyball and a strikeout set the stage for Magnuson's no-hitter-saving catch.

Jacobs' gain was Dundee-Crown's loss in more ways than one. The defeat meant the end of the 18-year career of Dundee-Crown coach Fred Bencriscutto, who after the game tipped his cap to his final squad of Chargers, who finished 14-14.

"These guys got every single bit out of themselves and I'm very proud of them," Bencriscutto said. "When Mike (Zozokos) got hurt at catcher (in April), that really caused us to reconfigure and make some changes. I thought they battled through an awful lot. I was really proud of them."