Baseball: Glenbard North shuts out West Chicago

After a pair of losses to begin the season, the Glenbard North baseball team has turned things around this week.

Allowing a combined two runs over the past 72 hours, the Panthers extended their winning streak to three with an 8-0 victory over West Chicago on Thursday in Carol Stream.

The shutout was their second consecutive, coming on the heels of a 10-0 decision against Larkin on Wednesday. Glenbard North (3-2) also beat Rolling Meadows 4-2 Tuesday.

"The past couple of days we have scored early and that has helped," Glenbard North coach Rick Smelko said. "That takes pressure off the pitchers and also takes pressure off the defense. We've come up with some timely hitting."

The home team's pitching was nearly flawless, starting with left-hander Jasper Serences, who allowed just one of the Wildcats' two hits over four innings. Spencer Salamone fanned three in a pair of innings in relief and Ronak Parmar closed things out in the seventh.

"We were all throwing strikes and getting ahead of hitters," Serences said. "My changeup was on today, I was getting a lot of strikes with that pitch. It felt good."

That trio of hurlers received all the run support they needed in the first, as the Panthers sent eight batters to the plate and scored three runs. Mike Wellman had an RBI single, Brandon Cole spilled off the fence and Jim Zay contributed a sacrifice fly.

Wildcats starter Bobby Bartlett settled down after that, yielding just one unearned run over his final three innings while striking out four in total. He also had a hit along with Dominic Deconcilis. West Chicago (0-3) did put runners in scoring position in multiple innings but had two thrown out at third by Glenbard North catcher Marc Muller.

"We spotted them three in the first and couldn't quite claw back," West Chicago coach T.J. Nall said. "We made some mental mistakes on the bases and some physical mistakes as well. You can't be giving clubs extra outs, whether it be mental mistakes or physical errors."

Wellman, who went 3-for-4, had another RBI single in the fifth as part of a 3-run inning.

"We are coming together as a team," Wellman said. "We have really good team chemistry, which helps us out. Our pitching has gotten a lot better over the past few days, we are not walking a lot of guys, and we have put runs up early.

"Plus we are getting aggressive on the bases (four stolen bases, three runs scored on wild pitches). We played aggressively today."