Baseball: South Elgin's big 4th inning too much for Glenbard East
One big inning was all South Elgin needed.
The Storm broke open a close game with a 5-run fourth and cruised to an 8-2 win against Glenbard East on a sunny Saturday in South Elgin.
The Storm (3-2, 2-0) hit for the cycle in the fourth, with a leadoff single by Thane Wills, a 2-run triple by Connor Lund, a run-scoring double by Jordan Green, and a 2-run homer by Keenan Oldani capping it off.
Oldani smacked an RBI double in the first before teeing off on Rams starter Braden Branecki's last pitch of the day and sending it high over the wall in left field to all but clinch the Upstate Eight matchup.
Storm starter Tyler Glowacki took awhile to get settled in, but after getting some advice from his coach, he found his groove and wound up striking out 9 in 5 innings before giving way to Jimmy Bluemling. Glowacki twice struck out the side looking.
"When I came in, my coach told me to keep my front shoulder down because I was yanking off," he said. "So I really took that into consideration, and I just found it."
After hitting the game's first batter and walking the second, Glowacki escaped the jam with 3 straight outs, then retired the side in the second with 3 straight called strikes.
Meanwhile, Oldani and Andrew Shall delivered two-out, run-scoring doubles in the first and second innings.
Glenbard East (1-9, 0-1) got one back in the third before the Storm offense erupted in the fourth.
"Good job by our kids getting 2-out hits to score runs," said Storm coach Jim Kating. "Tyler started off a little rough, then settled down on the mound before Jimmy came in. We're still trying to find ourselves and what's going on and I thought we played pretty well today."
Connor Peckham had 2 of Glenbard East's 3 hits.
The fourth inning started with the Storm playing for one run. Wills singled to left leading off. Kyle Steinhofer sacrificed and wound up reaching safely when the throw went astray. Lund plated both runners with a blast to left center. Green followed with his double and Oldani cleared the bases.
The next batter, Adan Guzman, doubled and Quinn Bradford walked, but Rams reliever Marco Diaz escaped the jam without further damage.
The Storm added a run in the sixth with Bradford's infield grounder scoring Shall.