A winning spring finish for Stevenson's Bourbon
It's hard to top being the quarterback of an undefeated state championship football team.
But Willie Bourbon came close this spring.
The senior third baseman guided a young Stevenson baseball team to within one win of a state finals appearance. In the process, he was just as clutch and influential as he was on the football field.
"I was talking to some of the guys about how incredible that would be to be a part of winning both (football and baseball state championships)," Bourbon said. "Especially after basketball won state, too. I don't think any school has ever won all three of those titles in the same (school) year.
"We came close in baseball. We had been playing really well the last few weeks of the season. But (against Jacobs on Monday in the Rockford supersectional), we just didn't have it that day."
Bourbon had it nearly every day.
Sporting a gaudy .425 batting average and ranking among the Patriots' leaders in extra base hits and RBI, Bourbon has been selected as captain of the Daily Herald's all-area baseball team for Lake County.
"Willie carried the team early in the season. That helped us get off to a great start," Stevenson coach Paul Mazzuca said. "He has emerged as a great team leader."
It's a role that fit naturally.
"With football, I saw what I had to do on the field to lead those guys to a state championship, with just being vocal and a leader," said Bourbon, who led Stevenson to the Class 8A state championship in November in his third season as the starter. "That went right over into baseball. We had a young team with guys who had never played varsity baseball before.
"I think it helped them to hear a voice between innings and (in the dugout). Leading by example is one thing, but sometimes it helps to be vocal, too."
Bourbon let his bat do the talking in a playoff victory over Libertyville last month, a game that he says was his best of the season. He smacked 2 home runs and drove in all five of Stevenson's runs.
It was an unexpected display of power for Bourbon, who had only 4 home runs on the season.
"I think my biggest strength at the plate is my patience," Bourbon said. "I took a lot of walks, and I picked out my pitches well. Each time I go up there, I'm just trying to make sure I put the bat on the ball."
Bourbon has had a lot of time to master that skill. He's been on the varsity since his freshman year. At the end of that season, he had his first college scholarship offer: from Illinois.
Other offers came in, but it wasn't until Northwestern made an offer at the end of his junior year that Bourbon got really excited.
Willie Bourbon, as it turns out, will be cheered on by Willie the Wildcat next spring.
"Northwestern just has the whole package," Bourbon said. "I love it there. The campus is great, they just got a new field. It's Big Ten baseball, the academics are great and I'm close to home. It's the perfect place for me."
At first, Northwestern was interested in Bourbon for football, too, just as some other schools were. But the Wildcats pivoted and went in another direction and stopped recruiting Bourbon for football.
"One of the things that was so different about my recruiting process was that I had both options going on for a while: football and baseball," Bourbon said. "During my sophomore and junior year, I made sure the football coaches knew that I also wanted to play baseball.
"I was interested in doing that. I would have loved to play both in college and Northwestern was interested in both for a while. When the football coaches there went in a different direction, I could have started looking more at some other schools who were still interested in me for both. Wake Forest and Illinois were that way. But I was just so into Northwestern by then. I liked the school so much that if it meant giving up football, I was going to give up football."
Bourbon still gets a hankering for football, though. Reminders are all over his house, from his prized state championship ring to the football equipment left all over the house by his younger brother Charlie, an incoming junior quarterback at Stevenson who is fighting to be Bourbon's successor.
"He's got camp right now and I see his pads and stuff all over and it makes me reminisce and think about all the great times with the team," Bourbon said. "I'm going to miss football. But at the same time, I went out on the highest note possible.
"I think I'm pretty content ending my career as a state champ. I'm ready to really focus on baseball. I've never had the chance to focus on just one sport before. I'm looking forward to that."
Follow Patricia on Twitter: @babcockmcgraw