Baseball: Lincoln-Way West mounts huge rally to topple Lincoln-Way East

NEW LENOX – Lincoln-Way West coach Jake Zajc will readily admit it’s not ideal for his team to dig a six-run deficit.

What he will admit being ideal is how his team responded to such a dilemma as it mounted a furious rally to claim an 11-7 victory over long-time rival Lincoln-Way East.

“This team, all season, has done an incredible job of battling back,” Zajc said. “Even when we were down, and we weren’t playing bad, they had a couple of big hits, but we just keep working. There have been times, even this year, where we’d get in that kind of situation and we’d fall apart. We’ve been talking about competing and effort, and if we focus on our effort and our competition everything else is going to take care of itself.”

It honestly didn’t look like laser-like focus would have been enough for the Warriors after three and half innings of play. An RBI single from John Connors gave Lincoln-Way East (12-5) a 7-1 lead at that point and what appeared to be a lock on the rivalry series that the Griffins have owned in recent campaigns.

But the Warriors had the first five batters reach in the fourth inning and simply kept the line moving against East starter Ryan Ball, who had dominated the Warriors (11-2-1) to that point, surrendering only a solo home run to Cole Crafton in the first inning.

That line kept moving until Harrison Scroggins stepped in and slugged a two-run homer to tie the game at 7.

“I was just trying to hit the ball where it was pitched,” Scroggins said. “It was a rough at-bat at first and I worked my way back into it. Honestly, the pitcher was throwing a little heat, and I was just trying to catch up to it.”

A few batters later, a wicked hop on the infield on a ball hit by Cam Buckley ended up with Buckley at second with a double and an 8-7 lead for West.

“We managed to get that one big inning and got the energy back on our side,” Scroggins said. “We just wanted to pick those runs off one at a time, and that’s what we ended up doing.”

Lincoln-Way East took early control of the game with a pair of first inning runs and then tacked on three more in the second on a three-run homer by Alex Stanwich to push the Griffins lead to 5-1. A sacrifice fly from Jack Hoh and the RBI single from Connors put East in front 7-1.

And while the statistical line from West starter Nolan Larson didn’t look particularly choice, Zajc pointed to how important his ability to continue to battle ultimately was.

“I actually thought Nolan Larson, to me, pitched a very good game,” Zajc said. “He battled through some tough situations and had some balls fall in on him. He kept us there.”

Reagan King came out of the bullpen, and although there were a few dicey situations, King didn’t allow any more runs, striking out five over the final three innings.

And while it was an unorthodox path to a victory over a long-time rival, the win by the Warriors snapped a long losing streak to the Griffins. How long has it been? No one knows for sure, but let’s just say it has been a while.

“Coach (Jim) Kohlbacher was talking about it, and he looked back on it and said something about two thousand days since we beat them last. Yeah, they’ve had our number for a while,” Zajc said. “And it didn’t look good early on today either, but it feels good, and we’ll keep working at it.”