St. Charles North sweeps Lake Park

Once again the St. Charles North baseball team has kept itself in the Upstate Eight Conference lead by cooling down a team that had previously been on a roll.

Two weeks ago St. Charles North started a 3-game series with Streamwood, who had just beat Neuqua Valley to get to 7-4 in the Upstate Eight. Three wins for the North Stars left the Sabres at 7-7.

After taking two of three in a hard-fought series with St. Charles East, the North Stars' next challenge was three games against a Lake Park team that entered with a 10-6 Upstate Eight record having just won a series over the Saints.

And three games later the Lancers are 10-9.

St. Charles North (24-4, 16-3) completed a sweep of Lake Park with an 8-3 win Wednesday in St. Charles.

"To get two out of three would have been really nice, to get a sweep is great," North Stars coach Todd Genke said. "Our kids were ready to play. It was kind of sketchy we would play (with the weather) and sometimes when you have a day like that you never know what you are going to get out of your kids."

As he has all year, Genke got great play from his players. The North Stars jumped ahead with 3 runs in both the first and second innings and never looked back. Kevin Borst and Matt Stevens both delivered key hits early.

"We had two productive first two innings and that's huge," Genke said.

Lefty Ryan Hudspeth won again, working 5 innings and improving to 7-0.

While Lake Park fell to 16-11, 10-9, Waubonsie Valley (18-8, 14-4) won again 5-1 over Bartlett on Wednesday to stay right on the North Stars' tail.

"We knew they (Lake Park) are a good team coming in," North Stars shortstop Ryan Richardson said. "It's good to put a good team down like this and go from there. We know Waubonsie is close to us and plays a schedule where they are going to win most of their games. We just have to keep doing our thing."

The North Stars are scheduled to play Elgin once Thursday and twice Saturday before concluding the conference season with three games against South Elgin next week.

"Not much room for error, but we expect that," Genke said. "I knew this race would be tight. I was hoping we would be where we are and we control our own destiny. That's what you want this time of the season."

DeKalb 4, Geneva 3: The Barbs did something nobody has done yet this year on Wednesday - beat Geneva ace Riley Perry.

Geneva scored once in the first and twice in the third to take a 3-1 lead. The Barbs rallied to tie the game in the fifth before scoring the winning run in the sixth.

Perry (7-1) allowed 6 hits and 4 walks in 6 innings while striking out three. Jack Delabar had 2 RBI to lead the offense.

Geneva (19-7, 12-4) hosts DeKalb the next two days with a chance to regain the Western Sun Conference lead from the Barbs.