Baseball: Montini gets great start on break

Montini continued its strong start to the 2016 baseball season with an 11-1 victory over Northside Prep on Saturday in Lombard.

The Broncos won for the fourth time in five outings as they get ready to depart for their spring break trip to Orlando on Monday.

“The bats have been hot at the beginning of the season,” said first baseman Alex Luka, who went 3-for-3 with a double and a pair of RBI singles. “We've started off most games pretty slow, but we have always had that one big inning to get us going like today.”

That inning Luka was referring to was the third, when the home team sent 13 batters to the plate and scored eight times to build a 9-0 advantage. Six players had hits, with Nick Malik and Luka both having two in the inning. JR Walsh and Justin Blake also had RBI singles.

“We started putting the ball in play,” Luka said, “and when you do that, things happen. We hit through the whole lineup. Everyone was hitting the ball well today.

“Our defense has also been spot on. We haven't made a lot of errors. And our pitching, (Anthony) Rodgers came out strong. He started off the game really well and that set the tone for the rest of the game.”

Rodgers was one of a trio pitchers on the mound for Montini. He worked three innings, striking out four. Patrick Laughlin pitched two, fanning four, and Jake Karczewski tossed an inning.

“This point early in the season,” Montini coach Rich Janor said, “we are trying to utilize a number of different pitchers in order to see what the rotation will be for conference play. Anthony and Patrick both did a nice job.”

Walsh and Trevor Young each had sacrifice flies to account for the final two runs.

“This is a team that has a good amount of team speed,” Janor said, “and can hit one through nine. And we've been focusing on playing clean defense and doing some of the little things.”