Fremd’s Zack-Jack pack sinks LZ

It’s fact that Zack had Jack’s back.

It’s been that way for a long time and vice versa.

“My buddy Jack, he’s my best friend,” senior shortstop Zack Kolakowski said of pitcher Jack Andersen, who’s also his Fremd baseball teammate. “I’ve known him since second grade.”

On Thursday, Fremd’s Jack-and-Zack attack carried the ninth-seeded Vikings to a 5-3 win over No. 8 Lake Zurich in a Class 4A regional semifinal at Mundelein. The 6-foot-3 Andersen allowed only 1 earned run in a complete-game effort, while the Illinois-bound Kolakowski went 3-for-4 with a double and 3 RBI.

“It’s nice to have him back,” Fremd coach Chris Piggott said of Kolakowski, who returned to the lineup recently after missing about six weeks with a broken pinkie.

The win puts Fremd (20-16) back at Mundelein on Saturday, when the Vikings will take on top-seeded Mundelein (32-4) at 9:30 a.m. for the regional championship.

Lake Zurich’s successful season ends with a 24-10 record. The Bears got two-out RBI hits from Dom DeMicco in the fourth and Jacob LaRue in the sixth, but they fell behind in the first inning and never led. They stranded 6 runners on base.

“We had a lot of opportunities,” Lake Zurich starting pitcher Mike Lutz said. “We came up big on some, and then other times didn’t get the hit when we needed to. But I’m putting a lot of it on me. I should have done a better job than that.”

Lutz was lifted after 5 innings with his team trailing 4-2. The Purdue-bound righty allowed 4 runs (all earned) but only 4 hits. Two of his 3 walks proved costly, which will happen when the free passes are to the leadoff hitter. Keith Browning played the leadoff role to perfection for Fremd, singling to lead off the game and scoring two batters later on Kolakowski’s ground-rule double that bounced over the fence in left, and walking his next three times up.

With Browning on third and two out in the third, Andersen helped himself out by pulling a pitch over the fence in left field for his first home run of the season and a 3-0 Fremd lead.

“I just hung a slider really bad,” Lutz said.

Andersen wasn’t trying to jack it out of the park.

“That was not my approach at all,” Andersen said with a laugh. “With a guy on third and two out, the last thing you want to do is swing for the fences. Lutz threw a tight slider and I just put a good swing on it.”

After Lake Zurich pulled within 3-2 on DeMicco’s clutch base hit, Fremd answered in the top of the fifth. Kolakowski’s two-out single scored Browning.

“We’ve had an up-and-down year as far as being able to get guys in and come up with clutch hitting,” Piggott said. “We always seem to get guys on, but we haven’t been able to get them in. We did a nice job today.”

In the seventh, with runners on first and second and two out, Kolakowski lifted a flyball to left that looked like it would be the final out. But the wind kept taking it, and the ball dropped for a run-scoring single.

Kolakowski used that knowledge to his advantage in the bottom of the seventh. After catcher Connor Bieda gunned a strike to second to throw out Lake Zurich’s pinch runner on an attempted steal, Bears leadoff man James DeGeorge hit a tricky popup into shallow left field. Kolakowski drifted back and, at the last second, spun and stabbed the ball for the second out.

“Off the bat, it looked normal,” Kolakowski said. “But in the back of my mind, I was thinking, ‘It’s been a windy day. Just track the ball as good as I can and try to make the play.’ I just made a speed turn, and then I tried my best to just catch the ball.”

Andersen (9-3) got the final out on a flyball, after a two-out single by John Orlando kept the Bears’ hopes alive.

“My last outing, in the (Mid-Suburban League) championship (a 3-1 loss to Hersey), I struggled in the later innings and I knew that was going to be a key coming into this game,” said Andersen, who struck out three Bears and didn’t allow an extra-base hit. “Lake Zurich is always good. They’re a good-hitting team. They never quit.

“I wasn’t going to let our season end,” Andersen added. “This has been a great year. I couldn’t ask for a better group of guys to play with.”

Andersen’s buddy never had a doubt that he would deliver.

“I always know when he’s on the mound we have a really good chance of winning the game,” Kolakowski said. “I have a lot of confidence in Jack.”

Naturally.