City softball: Searing, Fore!Gerber Collision win Rec D title

JOLIET – The Joliet Park District City Softball Tournament at Inwood uses the standard double-elimination format.

In each division, one team enters the finals with one loss and needs to beat the previously unbeaten finalist twice to claim the championship.

Last year in the Rec D division, Quack Pack/Bedrocks knocked off Fore!/Gerber Collision twice to win the title and get the automatic boot up a division this time around.

While Quack Pack/Bedrocks did repeat with a victory over Coldwell Banker in the Competitive final, Fore!/Gerber Collision entered the Red D finals as the unbeaten team for a second straight year.

Fore!/Gerber Collision middle infielder Nate Searing made sure history did not repeat, delivering an RBI single up the middle with nobody out in the bottom of the seventh inning Thursday night to give Fore!/Gerber Collision a 10-9 victory over The Crowd in the Rec D title game.

"We did not want to get double-dipped like last year," said Searing, who played baseball at Joliet Catholic Academy and was the No. 3 hitter in Fore!/Gerber Collision manager Ryan Bromer's lineup. "The guys in front of me were getting on base all through the tournament. They set everything up."

Searing finished with two hits, including a triple, and reached on an error. Connor Petschke, Keenan Petschke, Dom Hartman, winning pitcher Mitch Schroeder and Mike Grossklaus all had two hits. One of Hartman's hits was an inside-the-park home run and he drove in three runs. Connor Petschke, the cleanup hitter, knocked in two. Keenan Petschke hit fifth and Hartman sixth.

"Usually, the Petschkes [who played baseball at Lockport] hit 1-2 in our lineup," Searing said. "It's huge to have them on base."

"We switched things up a bit in the lineup in the tournament," Bromer said. "What happened was, Keenan is usually our leadoff guy. For our first tournament game, he was stuck in traffic on 355 and was late getting here, so he batted eighth.

"We hit well, and we said we'll just keep the top the same, keep him down a little in the lineup, and it worked out."

Fore!/Gerber Collision led 4-0 after one inning and 6-0 after three, but The Crowd rebounded. Greg Ponchak's fourth-inning home run high off the telephone pole beyond the left-field fence on Diamond 5 made it 6-1, and The Crowd scored another that inning to get within 6-2. It was 6-3 after five and 6-5 midway through the sixth.

Fore!/Gerber Collision scored three in the bottom of the sixth for a 9-5 lead, only to have The Crowd get four in the seventh for a 9-9 tie.

Ponchak, Dakota Brown, Grant Simotes, Reed Johnson, Dave Gunier, Josh Pizer and Steve Erickson all had two hits for The Crowd. Gunier delivered a two-run single with two outs in the seventh to tie it, 9-9.

"We had a lot of chances, but we couldn't get the big hit, especially in a game like this, where there is good defense being played," said Simotes, who played baseball at Providence Catholic and Western Michigan. "But we had a good tournament. We lost our first game and we had to come all the way through the losers' bracket to get to the finals."

"This year there was good defense and pitching on both sides," Bromer said. "It's always a good game when we play them."

The Crowd beat N.I. Steel, 11-1, in a slaughter-rule semifinal Thursday to earn its spot in the finals.

Meanwhile, Fore!/Gerber Collision exits the city tournament with a different feeling than in 2016.

"It's a much better feeling for us," Bromer said. "Our guys went out and battled. They're all great players and all fun guys.

"Some others throw teams together. But the last three or four teams in this tournament usually are teams that have been together for years."