Naperville North walks off with win
The instant the ball pinged off the bat, it was over; time to jump in a pile at home plate, stuff some gear in a duffle bag and go enjoy some barbecue with family on Memorial Day.
With one out in the bottom of the seventh inning and trailing by a run, Alex Garon launched a towering walkoff 2-run home run deep over the left-field fence. That gave Naperville North a show-stopping 6-5 victory over visiting Marmion at the Class 4A Naperville North baseball regional on Monday.
The game was delayed two hours due to sporadic rain showers.
"I saw his high fastball all game, and after he threw that breaking ball I was guessing it was going to be a fastball," said Garon, a senior center fielder who went 2-for-4. "As a team, we always keep our heads up and it's always about the team."
The box score for both teams looked virtually identical. Much of the focus until the seventh inning was on the two standout pitchers: the Huskies' Mark Khoury, who also went 2-for-2 with a walk at the plate; and Jake Esp of the Cadets, a 6-foot-4, 195-pound right-hander committed to playing at Villanova next year.
Between the looping, knee-buckle inducing curveball by the compact, no-nonsense senior right-hander Khoury and the fastball set on auto-gun by Esp, it became a guessing game on which team would breakthrough in this back-and-forth game.
It looked like Marmion was going to steal a win after putting up 3 runs in the top of the seventh to take the lead. After consecutive singles to Jon Young and Matt Henkel, a hit batsman led to a 2-run single by Marmion's Will Matthews.
This set the stage for Garon, who had just tagged a home run Saturday.
"There is no one else we wanted to have hit at that moment," Hunckler said.
It was a tough moment for the Cadets.
"I told them, it is going to hurt a lot today but when they look back at this season, it just didn't workout today," Marmion coach David Rakow said.
He shrugged, adjusted his cap and acknowledged how quickly things can turn.
"That's just the game of baseball," he said.