Any plans for a summer vacation will have to be put on hold another week for Fenwick baseball players.
For the first time in school history, the Friars extended their summer play by advancing into the Illinois High School Coaches Association (IHSCA) Summer State finals. Fenwick, who is guaranteed at least three games in the round robin tournament, opened the finals on Monday with a 4-3 loss to Sandburg. The Friars took on Lake Zurich (27-8) yesterday (after deadline), and were set to play Hinsdale South today (11 a.m.) at North Central College in Naperville. The IHSCA Summer State championship will be played at 7:30 p.m. Friday night at Benedictine University in Lisle.
Cam Verbeke took the loss against Sandburg, allowing four runs-one earned-on 10 hits. Sandburg got on the board early when two errors led to two runs in the first inning. Fenwick’s Austin Brown singled in a run in the third and drove in two with a double in the sixth, but it was all the Friars could muster.
“We had a case of the dropsies in the first inning and that came back to hurt us in the end,” said Fenwick head coach Dave Hogan. “You can’t make errors like that against a good team like Sandburg.”
The Friars, who were 17-5 going into Tuesday’s game, advanced to the finals by edging defending summer state champ Lyons Township 5-3 in the Fenwick Regional title game last week. Joe Sweeney gave up just four hits in seven innings, while fanning eight.
This time it was Fenwick being the early aggressor offensively. The Friars scored four runs in the first inning. Reid Rooney and Mike Falsetti drove in a run apiece with singles. Joe Ketcik then cleared the bases with a two-run double.
Falsetti and Ketcik struck again in the third. Falsetti drove in a run with a double, while Ketcik singled in a run.
Throwing errors led to Lyons’ next two runs, which came in the fourth and the sixth.
“[Sweeney] pitched a nice game and competed very well,” said Lyons Township head coach George Ushela. “In the first inning, we put ourselves in a hole and that changed a lot of things about how we approached the game. We kind of beat ourselves, but their middle of the lineup hit with authority. A fair assessment is probably Fenwick was the better team [today].”
In the first round of the regional, Fenwick defeated Jones 2-1. The Friars then edged Riverside Brookfield 7-6 in the quarterfinals, and clobbered No. 1-seeded York 7-2 in the semifinals.
Marty Farmer contributed to this report.
