DeKALB — Conner Williar said striking out is his least favorite part of the game, but the Sycamore pitcher subjected the DeKalb bats to that fate 14 times on Saturday in the first game of the First National Challenge.

Williar also homered as part of a six-run fourth inning in Game 1 for a 10-2 Sycamore win. Then the Spartans held off a five-run, two-out rally by the Barbs in the seventh for a 7-6 win in Game 2.

“It’s a great win, great cross-town rivalry,” Williar said. “It’s always nice to beat DeKalb. You always love to beat DeKalb. They’re a great opponent, they play hard teams and you can’t underestimate when they come in.”

The bats for the Barbs (4-13) struggled in both games until the seventh inning of the nightcap. Down 7-1 and facing the fourth Sycamore pitcher of the day in a combined no-hitter, the Barbs were down to their final out after Isaac Black was picked off first after reaching on a walk.

But Jack Keck tripled for the first hit of the game for DeKalb, Nate Nunez drove him home with a single and Bryson Buhk walked. That set up Maddux Clarence, the Game 1 starter for the Barbs, to blast a double off the fence on the line in left field. After an error, Tyler Freeney plated two more runs with another double.

“It’s exciting and it really gets the kids going,” DeKalb coach Josh Latimer said of the two-out rally. “We got Naperville Central next, and you’re going to run into a buzzsaw there. They’ve got good hitters and good pitchers there. So it gives them a little momentum heading into Naperville Central.”

The Spartans (14-5) brought in their regular closer, Tommy Townsend, to finish the game off. He got Josh Klemm to foul out to end the game.

“I knew he was available,” Sycamore coach Jason Cavanaugh said. “If we ran into some trouble there we would use him. I wasn’t expecting them to put up five runs but there’s a lot of fight in that team and they played hard for 14 innings.”

Reece Beinarauskas was 3 for 4 and scored three times in Game 2 as Kavanaugh got to use most of his roster over the course of the two games. Will Baumgartner also had a pair of hits to go with a run and two RBIs in the late game for Sycamore. Lucas Winburn and Addison Peck had two-hit games for Sycamore also in an 11-hit game for the Spartans.

In the first game, the Spartans pounded out 11 hits, but only two through the first three innings as Clarence was pitching strong early.

But in the fourth, Ethan Storm walked and Jimmy Amptmann launched a double off the fence in left. Joey Puelo singled to score Amptmann, then Williar homered to the alley in left-center for a 4-0 Sycamore lead.

“Two strikes, you’ve got to protect,” Williar said. “I hate striking out. It’s my least favorite thing to do in baseball. So I just tried to make contact and it ended up going out. You gotta thank the wind, sometimes. But I’ll take it.”

The rally kept going after the homer for the Spartans, who added two more runs thanks to a single by Townsend that scored Baumgartner and Kiefer Tarnoki.

The offensive outburst came after the Spartans managed just two hits in a loss to conference rival Kaneland on Friday.

“We just struggled all day yesterday at the plate,” Cavanaugh said. “For us to break out in terms of a big inning meant a lot. Six runs, and usually home runs or rally killers. But we managed to mount another threat after we had the four runs in and nobody on base.”

DeKalb struck out 17 times in Game 1 and had just four hits in the game, including an RBI single by Jackson Kees as part of a two-run seventh for their only scoring of the early game. Nate Nunez had the other three hits for DeKalb as he and Buhk were the only Barbs to not strike out in the first game.

“Guys are guessing,” Latimer said. “You can’t go up there and guess what pitch. They’re trying to play a guessing game right now and it’s not working for us. We need to get back to the basics of see ball, hit ball.”

Latimer said the Barbs got back to the basics in Game 2 in the seventh.

Cavanaugh said that Williar’s fastball, while in the low 80s, was located good enough and mixed in with enough breaking stuff to keep DeKalb off-balance in Game 1.

“I’d say Connor Williar is the story of the game right there,” Cavanaugh said. “He comes in, pitches 5 2/3 shutout innings, and hits a two-run homer at a time of the game when it was 2-0. I thought he did a great job. He did as good as you can possibly do today.”