Prairie Ridge 5, Carmel 4

A season of firsts continues for Prairie Ridge.

With their first-year coach Dave Haskins leading the way, the Wolves got their first 30-win baseball season and first trip downstate all at once Monday night.

In a nail-biting finish that led to a sophomore getting his first-ever Gatorade bath from ecstatic teammates, Prairie Ridge edged Carmel 5-4 in 8 innings at the Alexian Field Class 4A supersectional in Schaumburg.

The Wolves (30-8) will now face Neuqua Valley, last year's AA champion, in Friday's 7 p.m. state semifinal in Joliet.

"This has been a great season all the way around for us," said Haskins, a Conant graduate who was an assistant at Fremd and Palatine. "So many things we've done for the first time. 2008 has been a very good year for us."

It was a good year for Carmel, too. The Corsairs, who shared the league title in the rugged East Suburban Catholic Conference, close their season at 32-6 record.

"This was definitely a crazy game," Prairie Ridge senior Nick Martini said. "We wanted to go to state this year so bad. This feels really good. I'm so excited."

The excitement reached its zenith in the bottom of the eighth inning when Martini led off with a crushing triple to deep centerfield.

Carmel then intentionally walked the next two batters, loading the bases to force the out at home plate.

The Corsairs, who added another infielder to the mix by leaving left field largely uncovered, got Martini out at home on the next at-bat and was hoping for another force out to take off some of the pressure.

But that's when Prairie Ridge sophomore Chad Ljunggren, who was brought up to the varsity at mid-season, drilled a ball into right field. Despite having to cover more ground than normal, Carmel right fielder Joey Pudlo nearly made an amazing catch but the ball hit off his glove.

That allowed pinch runner Justin Henderson to score from third to end the game.

"I hit the ball hard and found the hole and brought the guy in," said Ljunggren, who was doused with water from a Gatorade cooler while he was doing postgame interviews. "Their guy (Pudlo) almost had it. This is so exciting.

"We've had a lot of success, but we had never made the leap to win a sectional and now we made an even bigger leap to win a supersectional and go downstate. This is so great."

Prairie Ridge's pitching was also great.

The Wolves held a Carmel team that was fresh off a sectional championship game in which it scored 16 runs on 11 hits to just 4 hits.

Starter T.J. Swank went 6½ innings and kept the Corsairs off-balance with his sidearm style. Then Martini finished the job by keeping Camel hitless the rest of the way.

"It's a fine line between being in the Final Four and the Elite Eight," Carmel coach Chuck Gandolfi said. "We had a lot of chances. We got the runs in tonight, but we had chances to do a little more damage and we didn't do it. Their pitching is tough. That had a lot to do with that."

Bobby Martin led Prairie Ridge with 2 hits, including a double, while Brian Siedlecki topped Carmel with 2 hits.

"We had our chances, we just didn't get it done," Siedlecki said. "We just came up a little short."