Baseball: Lincoln-Way East evens things up with Lockport

Griffins forge regular season split against Porters

Lincoln-Way East logo

LOCKPORT — The Lincoln-Way East baseball team brought a bit of a different tenor to Thursday night’s SouthWest Suburban Conference matchup with Lockport.

The Griffins were carrying an uncharacteristic two-game slide into the contest, including a narrow one-run loss to Lockport just two days prior. And while Thursday night’s matchup doesn’t even mark the halfway point of the season it carried a bit more weight than one might expect.

That tenor carried over into the way the Griffins played as it earned a 7-2 victory to secure a regular season split of the two powerhouse programs.

“This was huge. There’s no way around it, they gave us a few runs on Tuesday, but they also gave us a chance to win and we gave it back,” Lincoln-Way East coach Eric Brauer said. “We had a 4-2 lead in the fifth and we didn’t finish and we made a lot of mistakes on Tuesday and a lot of it boiled down to focus and to effort and to energy and everything tonight from my vantage point was about those three things.”

Making sure things were on point for the Griffins (11-4, 1-1) was Zach Kwasny. Kwasny has been brilliant this season on the mound and Thursday night was absolutely no deviation from that pre-established course. He worked the first inning recording a pair of strikeouts, before stepping into the box to rip a majestic solo home run in the bottom half of the frame to give Lincoln-Way East a 1-0 lead.

He’d strike out the side in the second and would only allow an unearned run in the fifth inning when a deep fly ball by Lockport’s Victor Izquierdo was played into a three-base error. He reached into the seventh inning before tiring and running up against his pitch count for the evening before giving way to Alex Stanwich who closed the door with a pair of strikeouts.

In all, Kwasny would strike out 10 in six-plus innings of work, allowing just three hits and one unearned run over six-plus innings of work.

“I’m just trying to staying focused and everything has been working, I had three pitches going again,” Kwasny said. “For me, I wanted to set the tone tonight. Honestly, I kind of know that I’m the top dog. I’m not trying to get too cocky, but I’m just confident in myself. It’s definitely fun right now, because everything is clicking.”

After Lockport (15-2, 1-1) evened the score with the unearned run in the fourth inning, the Griffins reclaimed control in its half of the fourth. Kwasny was right in the middle of things again, reaching via an rror and later came around on a RBI groundout from Jack Perak. Josh Safarik would later add a big two-out RBI single that stretched the Lincoln-Way East advantage to 3-1.

Kwasny then motored through the sixth inning retiring Lockport in order and then Lincoln-Way East went about giving him even more additional breathing room in the bottom of the sixth. Ryan Ball rapped a one-out double and then the Griffins loaded the bases after a hit batsmen and an infield hit from Jack Cosich.

Sophomore Tyler Bell then stepped in and swatted his first varsity home run over the left field fence for a grand slam to put and exclamation point on things for the Griffins on the day.

Lockport did try to mount a rally in its half of the seventh. Singles by Anthony Martinez and Kyle Kevish played a part in plating a run, while a pair of walks loaded the bases but Stanwich was able to strike out Lockport’s daunting No. 3 hitter Izquierdo to end the game.