Baseball: Litavecz, St. Charles North stymie Bartlett

An appropriate nickname for St. Charles North's Ryan Litavecz would be bookend following this week's performance.

Litavecz, a senior pitcher, capped the North Stars' perfect week with his second consecutive 3-hit outing - this time during a masterful 77-pitch complete-game effort in North's 2-0 Upstate Eight Conference crossover baseball victory over Bartlett (6-7, 3-3) Saturday in St. Charles.

The right-hander, who began the week by out-dueling Batavia ace Glenn Albanese in the North Stars' 1-0 win last Monday, put an exclamation mark on his team's 6-0 week with another efficient 4-strikeout, 1-walk effort.

"He is the definition of efficiency on the mound," North Stars coach Todd Genke said of Litavecz. "In his last game against Batavia, he was 20 of 25 for first-pitch strikes. He was in that same ballpark today (18 of 24).

"He works fast - guys love playing behind him. If you ever want to learn how to pitch, watch Ryan Litavecz."

"First-pitch strikes - that's really big for us," said Litavecz, now 4-0. "Being able to get ahead in the count and work from there. If you fall behind then you've got to get a fastball or something like that in there and there's a better chance they're going to hit it as opposed to being up 0-1, 0-2 and throwing off-speed.

"Today, all of my pitches were working. I was just working on keeping the ball low in the zone and getting groundouts and pop-ups."

St. Charles North (14-2, 9-1) jumped on Bartlett starting pitcher Ryan Temesvary quickly.

Three pitches into the bottom of the first inning, the North Stars loaded the bases.

Anthony Delisi (2 for 3) led off with a double down the right-field line, and Zach Mettetal (2 for 3) added a line single to center before Tyler Mettetal got hit by a pitch to load the bases for Sam Faith, who delivered a 2-run single for a 2-0 lead.

Temesvary escaped further damage with help from senior catcher Scott Ruedel, who caught a runner trying to steal second.

From there, both teams relied on strong pitching and solid defense the rest of the way.

Litavecz picked a runner off second to end the Hawks' threat in the third inning and allowed harmless singles to Frank Novello and Alex Rodriguez in the fourth and fifth frames, respectively.

"He's really good picking at bases," said Genke. "They hit a couple balls hard but we played well defensively. I thought they (the Hawks) played well defensively, too. It felt like we had more runs than two the way we came out in the first inning.

"I give them credit. They hung with us."

Temesvary also went the distance for the Hawks, allowing 7 hits.

"Ryan is good at adjusting hitter to hitter situations and inning to inning," said Bartlett coach Devin Rosen. "It's not really a big surprise because he's a real competitor. I'm very happy with his performance."

The difference was Litavecz.

"He's the ultimate competitor," said Genke. "When he goes out there, our kids have a lot of confidence that we're going to play well."

St. Charles North visits Streamwood for a makeup game Monday before opening a 3-game series at Geneva on Tuesday.

"We had a great week," said Genke.