Lake Zurich 9, Stevenson 5
"Finish" has been the slogan for Lake Zurich's baseball team all season.
"Last season there were four or five games that we were leading and then let them slip away," Lake Zurich coach Gary Simon said. "This year our team knew that if we were going to be successful, that we had to work on playing complete games.
"So we put that on the board in the beginning of the season and have kept reminding them of that all season."
Lake Zurich succeeded in that goal.
Dan Zummo's pitching plus timely hitting by Steve Cleary and Pete Romanello helped the Bears defeat host Stevenson 9-5 in a North Suburban Conference Lake Division baseball game on Thursday.
Lake Zurich (22-5) clinched a tie with Mundelein for the NSC Lake championship at 10-2. Mundelein beat Warren 4-2.
Zummo (7-0) pitched the first 5 innings, allowing 4 runs on 8 hits. He also helped himself with bat with 2 hits and a run scored.
Cleary, (2-for-4, 4 RBI) drove in the Bears' first run in the first inning. He followed up the next inning with an opposite field 3-run homer over the right-field fence to cap a four-run frame as Lake Zurich built a 6-0 lead.
"I just sat back and waited for my pitch," Cleary said. "I was really expecting a curveball, but he threw me a fastball. I was just trying to get a base hit."
After Zummo held Stevenson to only 3 hits in the first three innings, the Patriots scored twice in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Matt Goll (2 hits) doubled and scored on Matt Geissler's single.
Two batters later, Andrew Meister singled and Geissler scored on an error.
After Lake Zurich added a run to take a 7-2 lead, Stevenson tried to rally back with two runs in the fifth and one in the sixth.
Romanello ripped a 2-run single in the seventh to make the score 9-5.
In the bottom of the seventh, Joey DeBernardis, who started the game at third base and had 2 hits, came in for only his second relief pitching stint on the season to shut the door and record his first save.
Stevenson (13-12) finished 5-7 in the NSC Lake.
"You cant allow a good hitting team like Lake Zurich to have extra at-bats," Patriots coach Paul Mazzuca said. "We had a misplayed ball in the second which led to the home run, and then we let a flyball drop that led to a run in the fifth."