Baseball: Lincoln-Way East powers its way past Providence

NEW LENOX – To put it mildly, the senior season of Lincoln-Way East pitcher Zack Kwasny has had its fair share of injuries.

But the Ball State-bound pitcher has become adept at simply powering through.

So when cramps during Saturday morning’s nonconference showdown against Providence became the latest issue on a long list of injuries that Kwasny has had to endure, exiting the game before he’d exhausted whatever he had to give simply wasn’t an option, especially in a meeting of two of the state’s top teams.

“A body part would have to fall off before I would come out,” Kwazny said.

The cramps finally won out, along with Kwasny’s pitch-count threshold, when he finally left in the sixth inning. But his effort prior, combined with a potent offensive attack that battered Providence for 12 hits, set the stage for a 13-5 Lincoln-Way East victory.

Kwasny struck out six over the first three innings and seemed to be locking in after the Griffins (21-6) took an early 2-0 lead in the first inning on an RBI double from John Connors and an RBI single from Trevor Fishman.

But visible signs of trouble began cropping up in the third inning, as the cramping started to take hold. A fourth-inning collision on a play at first base didn’t help his physical state either, but Kwasny kept battling, which came as no surprise to anyone inside the Lincoln-Way East program.

“It doesn’t matter if we’re playing the No. 1 team in the state or if we’re playing the No. 700 team in the state. If he shows up in a uniform, he wants to compete,” Lincoln-Way East coach Eric Brauer said. “He wants guys to count on him to compete, and he takes pride in being that guy.”

Early on, Kwasny looked like he wasn’t going to be afforded much more breathing room than the two runs the Griffins posted in the first.

But Jack Cosich ripped a two-out double in the fourth, the first of three doubles on the day, while Matt Hudik coaxed a walk which set the stage for Tyler Bell to swat a three-run homer over the left field fence to put the Griffins in control 5-0.

“We got a couple of guys on base, and I was just trying to get the ball in the air,” Bell said.

It was part of a monster day for Bell, a Pittsburgh recruit, as Providence (23-4) couldn’t find a way to retire him. He reached base all five times he came to bat, with three singles, a home run, a walk and four RBIs.

Bell was the catalyst for an impressive offensive effort for Lincoln-Way East, who other than a quick 1-2-3 inning in the second extended innings and seemed to have constant traffic on the base paths, which they usually cashed in.

Trevor Fishman also provided a huge effort for East with three hits, four RBIs and solid defense, making a number of plays to help silence Providence.

“I felt like we really grinded out our at-bats today,” Brauer said. “Other than the second inning, we’d get to two strikes, multiple foul balls, ball in play, error, base hit. A lot of things happened deep in counts, and we weren’t giving away at-bats. You could just tell our fight in at-bats.

“You saw a lot of guys just battling to get the job done.”

That relentlessness allowed the Griffins to score seven runs in the final two innings.

It gave Kwasny enough breathing room to try to gut out a few more innings before he finally relented in the sixth, giving way to Aaron Scott, who finished to give the Griffins a win they really wanted.

“It was a big game. They sent us home last year, and we took that,” Bell said. “We just want to keep going in the right direction.”

Jackson Smith had three hits for Providence.