Streamwood’s Harris dedicated himself to succeed

Streamwood pitcher Josh Harris would later admit he was starting to lose his legs when he took the mound for the seventh inning of the Sabres’ 2-1 sectional title game victory over Cary-Grove last Saturday.

You couldn’t blame the left-hander for feeling a bit on the tired side. Harris had tossed 1⅓ innings three days earlier to close out the semifinal win over Rockford Boylan, and the 77 innings the Villanova recruit had thrown over the course of the previous 13 weeks were already more than any pitcher in the Fox Valley this season.

Complicating matters, Saturday qualified as a true scorcher under the unrelenting midday sun, unlike the first 70 days of the mostly cold and rainy 2011 high school baseball season.

Fans ringing the diamond were sweating through their shirts just watching the game, thus one can imagine the energy the 6-foot, 3 inch Harris was burning on each delivery with a leg kick high enough to graze the brim of his cap.

Had the scenario unfolded a year earlier, Harris likely would never have sniffed the seventh inning. Or maybe the sixth for that matter.

But there was a reason Streamwood’s big lefty had enough energy in reserve to finish the game by fanning Cary-Grove’s Michael Vilardo, the area’s leading home run and RBI man: Harris simply wasn’t as big a lefty as he used to be.

“I lost probably 15 to 20 pounds last summer,” said Harris, a four-year varsity player. “I had never really taken being in shape all that seriously, but my velocity wasn’t where I thought it should be. I decided to dedicate myself to getting in top condition to see if I could max out my potential.”

The work paid off for both Streamwood and Harris, who went 7-2 with an ERA of 3.14 and 113 strikeouts.

For maximizing his potential and for leading the Sabres to their first conference, regional and sectional championships, Harris has been named the honorary captain of the 2011 Daily Herald Fox Valley All-Area Baseball Team.

Harris had the right coaching staff to help him get in shape last summer. He underwent a physical transformation under the direction of coaches Mike Hlavacek and Ben Erickson of the Fox Valley Royals, his summer travel team.

For the first time in his life, Harris got serious about conditioning. He hit the weight room Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7 a.m. In addition to working with elastic bands and throwing weighted balls to strengthen his shoulder, he became quite familiar with his running shoes.

“Running. There was definitely a lot of running involved,” said Erickson, a 1999 NAIA all-regional selection at Judson University. “We knew Josh wasn’t very far away from hitting some magic numbers (on the radar gun) that would put him on the map.”

Erickson was the director of baseball operations at the Fox Valley Sports Academy in Elgin from 2005-09 and continues to serve as an assistant varsity coach at South Elgin High. He credited Hlavacek’s conditioning program for whipping Harris into shape.

An Illinois State pitcher in 2005-06, Hlavacek had Harris play aggressive long toss and often ran with his protégé from outfield pole to outfield pole — again and again and again. Even after 5, 6 or 7 innings of pitching in the summer heat, Harris ran poles for half an hour after games at Elgin’s Trout Park.

The results were easy to see. He slimmed down from 235 pounds to 215 and gained a layer of muscle throughout his body he’d never before enjoyed.

The payoff was a jump in velocity. Harris’ fastball increased from 84 mph at the beginning of the summer to 89 mph by August.

“By the end of the summer the ball started exploding out of his hand, which is what everybody had been waiting for,” Erickson said.

Harris pitched in the Sabres state semifinal victory over Neuqua Valley in summer-league play and went on to attend some late-summer showcases, where he opened eyes with his improved pitch speed, stamina and endurance.

Suddenly there was interest from schools like Virginia, Southern California, Illinois, Air Force, Northern Illinois, Villanova, etc. They had all seen video clips the slimmed-down Harris sent to market himself. Many of those programs felt compelled to at least inquire about the 6-3 lefty whose fastball was approaching 90 mph.

Harris eventually settled on Villanova. A remarkably well-spoken 18 year old with a 4.4 grade-point average, he picked the Pennsylvania private institution for its academic reputation. The sweat equity he invested in himself over the summer had paid off in the form of a college education.

His improved conditioning habits also helped Harris recover from off-season surgery to repair loose fragments in his foot, an injury likely suffered at the start of the high school basketball season due to an ankle sprain. Harris usually took personalized pitching lessons in the winter with Erickson at FVSA, but he didn’t throw this year until two weeks prior to the opener.

“As soon as Josh got cleared he started running again,” said Streamwood coach Steve Diversey. “He got his wind back right away and had all our other pitchers running with him. I think that’s why he had enough left in the tank to finish against Cary-Grove.”

Harris struck out Vilardo with his 103rd pitch, a high fastball, to win the sectional title on the hottest day of the season to that point.

“He did a real nice job hanging in there on a hot day after throwing an inning and a third a few days earlier,” Cary-Grove Don Sutherland said. “Obviously, he got an emotional lift when they got him the lead in the sixth, but I thought he’d get tired with that high leg kick because that was a darned tough day to pitch a complete game, especially in a pressure situation. He was tough”

Winning the sectional title was one of the greatest accomplishments in Streamwood sports history, a history Harris purposefully set out enhance before he left high school.

“When we were freshmen, not a lot of guys bought into the idea that we could do this at Streamwood,” said Harris, whose dream season ended when the Sabres lost 6-1 to Lyons in a supersectional game in Rockford Monday. “But I think what we accomplished as a team can get contagious quickly.

“If the younger guys see success, they’ll know how to achieve success in the future. I hope that’s the legacy this team leaves. I hope all the classes that come after us realize they can do it if they put their mind to it and dedicate themselves together to a goal.”

All the next generation of Sabres has to do is follow the lead of Harris, whose example of paying the price for success could have legs for years to come.