Prep baseball: Sycamore’s incredible run started after tough mid-season stretch

The Sycamore baseball team quietly emptied out its dugout on a rainy April afternoon.

The Spartans had just lost their third straight game against Kaneland, with the finale of the sweep coming in a listless 9-3 defeat in Maple Park. After starting the season by winning their first five games, the Spartans were underachieving and hovered just over .500. The Spartans followed with a loss to Johnsburg and split with Sterling – losing 15-14 on the road to make them 12-10 on the season.

Then it all turned around.

With only two returning starters on the roster, the Spartans rallied by only losing twice the rest of the season – the second defeat coming to Limestone in the Class 3A Rock Island Supersectional on Monday in Moline.

“I’ve never been more proud of a team,” Sycamore coach Jason Cavanaugh said after the team’s 3-1 loss to the Rockets. “I’ve been coaching high school baseball for 23 years and I’ve never been more proud of a group of kids. From as far back as we’ve come, we were 12-10 at one point and dealing with a lot of internal drama and the way our players rallied together and put together a streak of 13 out of 15 games, I think says a lot of the character of our guys.”

After the May 3 defeat to Sterling, the two losses came against Limestone and when they were edged 2-1 at Jacobs, which advanced to the sectional semifinals in Class 4A, giving Sycamore a record of 25-12 on the year.

The incredible run for the Spartans started with a pair of walk-off wins against Belvidere North – foreshadowing their flair for the dramatic that arose in the postseason. After Sycamore followed by convincingly sweeping rival DeKalb, the march was on.

“Then you’re off and running and you can’t lose,” Cavanaugh said. “That middle part of the season was tough. The three Kaneland games we embarrassed ourselves three games in a row. ... It was a seven game stretch of, this is as bad as we could possibly play.”

By the time the postseason arrived, the Spartans had won nine out of 10 games. Senior catcher Michael Beaudoin said the hot stretch was a combination of improvement and the Spartans finally playing up to their potential.

“We had kids who could play higher and weren’t playing at their full ability and I think we had a lot of younger kids who improved their skills a lot and showed what they had,” he said.

While the Spartans got plenty of production from juniors Jack Mizgalski (.333 batting average, 26 RBIs) and James Marcinkowski (.295, 33 RBIs) and sophomore Zach Carlsen (.324, 33 RBIs), the heart of the team was still Beaudoin (.357, 45 RBIs) and senior Jordan Wright (.450, 27 RBIs, 45 runs), Cavanaugh said.

“Those guys are two great high school players and they got us here and what both of those guys did for us as a team is not replaceable,” he said. “I told the younger guys, if we can get five or six of you guys to play the way those guys play and practice the way those guys practice, then we’re going to be great. We’re going to be unstoppable.”

Cavanuagh highlighted the growth of the Spartans since the tough stretch in the middle of the season – improving adjustments at the plate and in the field and the pitching staff’s ability to attack the strike zone. Beaudoin said the Spartans bonded well following the bump in the road, making them tougher.

They needed that toughness in their postseason run, routinely having their backs against the wall.

Trailing 4-3 heading into the bottom of the seventh in the regional semifinal against Mendota, the Spartans loaded the bases and Mizgalski smacked a two-out, walk-off grand slam.

In a sectional semifinal against Rock Falls, the Spartans quickly fell behind by four runs after the first inning only to claw their way back for a 10-7 victory. Sycamore followed that up with their second walk-off hit of the playoffs, with Marcinkowski hitting the game-ending RBI single in the bottom of the seventh in a 4-3 win over Rockford Christian to take the Class 3A Rochelle Sectional.

“These guys practice hard and they play hard all the time,” Cavanaugh said. “They’re mentally into the game and it’s so easy at the end of the year – school’s out, it’s summertime, the weather’s nice outside and these guys didn’t complain once about going to practice. We practiced every day at nine o’clock in the morning and there was no complaining. Our kids showed up on time and practiced hard. That was a big factor.”

Sycamore’s run finally came to an end on Monday in Moline. It was the second time in three years that the Spartans had reached a supersectional and with plenty of talent returning next season, Cavanaugh hopes the Spartans have another special postseason in them in 2017.

“Two in three years isn’t bad,” Cavanaugh said. “With the guys we got coming back, we’re hoping to get back here again next year and celebrate on the other side of the field.”