Baseball: Conant comes back twice to hand Schaumburg 1st loss
Conant outlasted Schaumburg and the sunlight Monday in Hoffman Estates.
In the Mid Suburban West opener for both teams, Conant rallied twice to beat previously unbeaten Schaumburg 9-6 in a game that ended in the bottom of the sixth due to darkness.
Conant (8-3, 1-0) knocked out 12 hits, including three for extra bases.
"You have to hand it to my offense today, they did an incredible job," Conant coach Derek Fivelson said. "I was happy we were able to erase the first inning. I knew our starter (Jackson Breaux) would settle down and he kept us in the game."
Schaumburg (9-1, 0-1) looked like an unbeaten team in their half of the top of the first when they scored three times.
Brayden Mazzacano singled and then ran his way to the first run. Erick Colon scored on an RBI single by Alex Spung and Colin Quinn drove in Colin Adams with a bases-loaded walk.
Conant came back with a trio of runs of their own in the half of the first.
Cooper Hanson, who would have two hits and a sacrifice fly, drove in two of his four runs with a two-run single. That scored Jake Parpet and Logan Gale, who would have two hits in the game. Hanson would then score on Matthew Maize's single.
"We kind of roll together," Hanson said. "I think our team is seeing the ball real well. I felt good today."
Conant tallied single runs in each of the next two innings to pull ahead 5-3.
Hanson's sacrifice fly scored Parpet in the second. Maize, who led off the third with a triple, scored on Nicholas Nitti's RBI single.
Schaumburg, which had been stymied after their first inning outburst, found their stride again in the fourth.
With two outs, Mazzacano knocked a seeing-eye single though the right side. Raffi Torosian followed with a double. He would then score on an error as the Saxons tied the game up at 5-5.
Conant then showed their own resiliency in their half of the fourth with two outs. The Cougars strung together five consecutive hits to produce four runs to open up a 9-5 lead.
Isaiah Rhodes singled and pinch runner Austin Potocnic scored on a double by Hanson. Angelo Colletta singled to score Hanson, and Colletta scored on Maize's second triple of the game. Maize then trotted home on Aidan Kovaka's single.
"It feels real good," said Maize, who now has three triples this season. "We are a good hitting baseball team and we are going to surprise a lot of people."
Schaumburg was able to get a run back in the sixth to make it 9-6 as pinch runner Tyler Schmidt scored on a fielder's choice by Spung. But after the third out in the inning, the umpires conferred with both coaches and then ended the game.
"We were late getting here and could have used that extra 15 minutes," Schaumburg coach Nick Kostalek said. "We didn't have any shutdown innings until the fifth and that hurt. I thought offensively, we battled. We just had to do a better job of shutting them down and giving them clean innings."
The teams will meet again Wednesday at Schaumburg with an anticipated matchup of Bryce Loeger for Conant and Mazzacano from Schaumburg. Both are unbeaten this season.