High school baseball: Jacobs' run to state began years ago

At one of the final practices in preparation for Friday’s Class 4A state semifinal, Jacobs baseball coach Jamie Murray is hitting ground balls to infielders when he stops and points his fungo bat toward the left-field fence.

That’s where the first banner will go, he says. A 24-foot tribute to the Golden Eagles’ three regional championships in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

He points the bat slightly to his right, toward right-center field, where outfielders are shagging balls. Out there will be the sectional banner. In gold letters with black trim, it will recognize the 2013 and 2015 sectional championships.

Next to it will be one for the 2015 supersectional, the one that helped the Golden Eagles become the first Jacobs boys team in any sport to reach the final four.

They’re stashed away somewhere in a back room, just waiting to be hung at the start of next season. But Murray has been envisioning them on these walls since he took the head coaching job in 2012, when the mere mention of a regional title took much more imagination.

2012 – 'Working Together' (20-16)

The Jacobs baseball team Murray inherited in 2012 wasn’t one many athletes sought out.

When senior pitcher Ryan Sargent was in middle school, he seriously considered attending a Catholic school that could help him better develop as a baseball player. For good reason.

In the five years before Murray became the head coach, Jacobs had broken .500 once (2010). The Golden Eagles finished last in the Fox Valley Conference Valley Division twice during that stretch, including the 2011 season before Murray took over, and had gone through three coaches. The team lacked cohesiveness and direction.

“Everyone in the conference thought we were just a pushover,” said 2013 grad Nick Ledinsky. “Anyone that was going to come to Jacobs was probably going to come out with a win.”

Murray started a tradition of printing T-shirts with a saying on the back. His first season, they picked "working together." It was going to take a lot of work to turn the FVC doormat into a contender.

He began reconstructing the program and its facilities, installing batting cages along the right-field line in his first season. In the ensuing years, boosters pumped tens of thousands of dollars into projects to add bleachers, refurbish the dugouts and resurface the infield with clay and sod.

The Golden Eagles made history Murray’s first season. They won 20 games, the most in school history, and advanced to a regional championship game.

But in the title game against Crystal Lake South, they fell a run short in a 3-2 loss. They came short of the victory and the banners Murray pictured. But it was a start.

2013 – 'Building Traditions' (25-11)

The practice before the regional championship game in 2013, the Golden Eagles rehearsed what they would do when they won. The infielders practiced tossing their gloves in the air. The outfielders planned to meet in center field and do a three-person chest bump.

On gameday, Ledinsky caught a comebacker and tossed it to Ben Murray at first base to complete his shutout. In the blur of excitement after their first regional victory, the plans were forgotten. The outfielders sprinted straight to the pitcher’s mound and piled on their teammates.

Meanwhile, Ben Murray tucked the ball in his back pocket, where no one would see it. When he was a kid playing on the Algonquin Storm traveling team, he stole balls all the time after games. The kid in him wanted to keep this one, too.

He went home and wrote on it with a marker: “Regional Champs. 5/23/13.” Ben put the ball on a shelf in his room, where it still sits today.

Jacobs’ season continued to the sectional championship, where it played rival Dundee-Crown. It was a dream matchup. Jacobs played its biggest rival in what was, at the time, the biggest game in the baseball team’s history.

“I remember thinking Jacobs/ Dundee-Crown. Senior year,” said Connor Conzelman said. “That’s something you would make up as an eighth-grader, just messing around in practice.”

When Jacobs won, Murray told Conzelman to go get the plaque. He grabbed it and showed it to the fans who had been harassing him during the game.

“I probably seemed a little cocky,” he admits “But it was one last little ‘We gotcha.’”

The motto on the T-shirts that season was “building traditions.” The Golden Eagles had done just that. A team that never had won any titles now had two plaques to proudly display. They proved that Jacobs was no longer a pushover, but a contender.

“I think that was really the year that the bricks were laid for the entire house,” Ledinsky said.

2014 — 'Here to win' (25-13)

Winning one season is success. It takes years and winning to be considering a tradition. Jacobs did just that in 2014, when it again won a regional championship.

The Golden Eagles won another plaque. And Ben Murray quietly pocketed another ball for his collection.

“Tradition has got to start somewhere,” Ben Murray said. “Before, our tradition was not winning regional and no winning, period. We just kind of wanted to start a new tradition around Jacobs of getting to regional finals and winning.”

A team that had just one winning season in the five years before Murray came to the program now had three 20-win seasons.

2015 – 'Why not us?' (29-10)

Back at practice earlier this week, coach Murray picked up his fungo bat and held it at chest level.

“If you set the bar at regionals,” he said, pounding a ball against the bat to show it coming to a sudden stop. “We wanted to raise the bar. We said Joliet from Day One.”

When it came time to decide on a motto this time around, the seniors selected “Why not us?” Their classmates and even teachers had plenty of reasons why not – there weren’t enough hitters. The pitching would falter. No other team in school history had made it to the final four. How could this group?

They were almost right. It took a sixth-inning rally and 12 innings for the Golden Eagles to escape the first round of its regional with a victory over their rival, Dundee-Crown. The narrow win only fueled the haters.

“They said, ‘You guys are idiots,’” Sargent said this week at practice. “‘You said you were going to make it to state and you almost lost to D-C.’”

Sitting nearby, Kozlak piped in, “We’re the group of idiots that made it.”

The 2015 squad is the winningest baseball team in Jacobs history. It’s the first boys team to win a supersectional. By making it to the final four, the baseball team has advanced further than any sports team in school history.

This success was not sudden, however. Over the past four seasons, the Golden Eagles have worked toward this moment and their chance to raise more banners.

As batting practice finished, Murray picked up his bat one more time. He again traced the outfield with the bat. This time, he directed it toward center field.

“Now, I’m going to have to get another banner. We’ll say state champs,” he says, smiling. “No. To be determined.”