Emilio Gandarilla could place the year of his last home run.

The details, though, escaped Downers Grove North’s senior shortstop.

“Freshman year, I don’t know when it was. The game wasn’t important,” Gandarilla said. “This one, huge.”

He indeed won’t soon forget this one.

Gandarilla turned on an 0-2 inside fastball for a tie-breaking two-run homer with two out in the fifth.

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Class 4A Oswego East Regional final baseball: Downers Grove North at Yorkville. Downers Grove North celebrates with the Class 4A Oswego East Regional final plaque after defeating Yorkville. May 30, 2026 in Oswego. (Gary E Duncan Sr for Shaw Local )

The fourth-seeded Trojans, scoring the game’s final nine runs, went on to beat fifth-seeded Yorkville 12-7 in Saturday’s Class 4A Oswego East Regional final.

Downers Grove North (23-12), which won its fourth straight regional title, advances to face top-seeded Lockport in Wednesday’s sectional semifinal at Lockport.

If Gandarilla’s first homer in three years, and first varsity homer, made him an unlikely power source, so too did his senior stats. An all-conference shortstop as a junior, Gandarilla entered Saturday hitting .267 with six total extra-base hits.

He dropped to ninth in the order for much of the year, but made an adjustment midseason, choking up on his bat.

“I feel like I have more bat control and whip. It’s a change I change midway through and saw progress,” Gandarilla said. “It made me stay level, stay on plane, through the baseball.”

Gandarilla came to the plate, facing Yorkville reliever Brody Dryden for the first time, with two out in the fifth after Owen Galas had drawn a walk.

He took a strike, swung through the next offering, fouled off a pitch – and then hit the next one just over the fence in left for a 9-7 Trojans’ lead.

“My approach is middle away. When I saw middle in I adjusted,” Gandarilla said. “It’s all just a blur. It’s one of those moments that you don’t remember anything.”

“Just a great moment for him and kudos to his work ethic,” Downers Grove North coach Kyle Briscoe said. “All conference guy last year, this year has not gone up to his expectations, glove has been there all year, for him to come through was just huge.

“Got a fastball, turned on it – especially in this yard, 300 down the line, just enough. Probably any other yard it’s not but today it’s enough."

Yorkville’s Kal Arntzen went deep twice, his two-run shot in the first inning starting the game’s scoring.

Arntzen’s grand slam off Downers Grove North starter Angelo Chiarelli in the fourth gave the Foxes (23-12), going for their first regional title since 2021, a 7-3 lead.

“It was pretty nice,” Arntzen said.

But the Trojans came right back with four runs in the bottom half to tie it, aided by a walk, a hit batter and wild pitch.

Yorkville pitchers issued seven walks, and hit three batters. Sophomore starter Jackson Knickerbocker labored through a 44-pitch, three-run first inning, didn’t allow a hit until the fourth, but didn’t last that inning.

“If you would have told me coming into this game that we would score seven runs, I would have felt pretty good about our chances,” Yorkville coach Tom Cerven said. “Ultimately one of those games I feel like we let one slip through. Unfortunately we didn’t follow through on the other elements of the game.”

Briscoe, who saw Yorkville walk off Oswego East 9-8 on Thursday after those two clubs scored a combined 41 runs in two games in the same park during the regular season, was hardly surprised at the nature of Saturday’s game.

“On the scouting report I said no lead is safe,” Briscoe said. “I told our guys it would be back and forth and we prepared for that. Don’t get too high, don’t get too low.”

While the bottom third of the Trojans’ order – Grant Fordonski, Galas and Gandarilla – accounted for half the Trojans’ eight hits, A.J. Myers restored order on the mound.

The junior right-hander came on after Arntzen’s grand slam and threw 3⅔ shutout innings. He didn’t strike out a batter, walked four and allowed two hits – but did the job.

“Doesn’t throw too hard, but he has the ability to throw three pitches for strikes and keep guys off balance,” Briscoe said. “He has done it all year. Nothing overpowering but he pounds the zone. In a game like that, that was huge.”

Gavin Geegan and Frankie Pavlik each had two hits for Yorkville, each scoring a run with Pavlik driving in a run.

Cerven, in defeat, couldn’t say enough about the group.

“This group of seniors, really a grinding group, worked for everything they got, one of the hardest-working groups, probably one of my favorite groups as a collective whole,” Cerven said. “Kal, he has been our offense. Senior group, he was at the center of it.”