Forty degrees, snow flurries and a muddy field–although it felt like Bears weather, as far as Joliet Catholic was concerned, those were perfect conditions for baseball.
The Hilltoppers batted around in three separate innings, including the second that broke the game open, in a surprising 15-2 six-inning rout of No. 7 St. Rita.
Mustangs starting pitcher Joseph Dunaj didn’t make it out of the second inning as Jake Trader crushed a towering two-run homer to open the scoring. Then the Hilltoppers opened the floodgates.
After Joliet Catholic loaded the bases with two walks and a hit, Dunaj walked Jake Jaworski to force in a run. Nick Testin singled home another run and Chris Gruber doubled in a pair to build a 6-0 lead.
With the game in hand, the Hilltoppers turned the reins over to right-hander Colin Kemp to keep St. Rita’s bats chilled. Kemp allowed only four hits, striking out five en route to a six-inning complete-game victory.
“[Kemp] was really hitting his spots early and throwing strikes,” Joliet Catholic coach Jared Voss said. “With this being his first outing, I thought he was pretty exceptional.”
After the six-spot, St. Rita (6-4) kept the Hilltoppers at bay until the fifth inning when Joliet Catholic scored four runs–three unearned–off Mustangs relief pitcher David Mitchell, whose defense committed four errors behind him.
St. Rita kept the game from being called because of the 10-run slaughter rule in the bottom of the fifth when Keith Samansky smacked an RBI single and later scored on a wild pitch to cut the score to 10-2.
Joliet Catholic put the game to rest with another go-around of the lineup in the top of the sixth, scoring five runs highlighted by a two-run double by Ryan Lincoln, who finished the game with three RBIs.
“We had a bad game today, but there are 35 games in the season and we’ll be there in the end,” St. Rita coach Mike Zunica said. “We have a good team here.”
With all the cancellations and rescheduling, Joliet Catholic was playing only its third game of the season.
“Our guys have been hungry to face live pitching instead of swinging at wiffle balls inside a gymnasium,” said Voss, whose Hilltoppers (3-1) knocked off West Chicago 4-3 in their second game of the day.
