Boylan’s late-inning rally fell just short, and the Titans’ postseason magic came to an end with an 11-7 loss to Geneva in the Class 3A Sycamore Sectional championship game Saturday, June 6.
Their season ended just two wins short of the state tournament.
“This was a fun postseason run,” Boylan head coach Matt Weber said after his team’s come-from-behind performance. “And after this, they should at least have that hunger coming back next season.”
The same thing happened to Winnebago in its 2A Byron Sectional final, where it fell 3-0 to Harvest-Westminster.
“That was a tough team; and he was a tough pitcher,” Winnebago head coach Ron Adams said about Harvest-Westminster, and its ace Ryan St. Louis. “I told the guys: ‘Sometimes the story doesn’t have a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great story.'”
Dakota’s baseball team was vying for a shot in the 1A supers with a Forreston Sectional title matchup with Galena that started at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
And after the two early losses for the Rockford-area squads on June 6, Dakota was the last hope.
This section will be updated once the Dakota game ends.
Boylan’s rally falls just short
Boylan appeared to be out of it early on, down 11-1 and down to its last out in the bottom of the fifth. But the Titans found a groove, and fought back, multiple times.
“We just didn’t want to go home early,” McDermott said after his 10th home run of the season provided one of the sparks. “We knew we could put up runs on these guys, and we did there for a while.”
McDermott went 2-for-3 with a walk, three RBIs and two runs scored, and a pair of Boylan pitchers found a way to douse the flames when Geneva (31-7) came out on fire. The Vikings, who eliminated Belvidere North with a 12-1 beatdown in Wednesday’s sectional semis, scored five runs on four hits and a walk off Boylan starter Joey Roscoe in the top of the third.
They added to it with six runs in the fourth, chippping away with three hits and a walk, and had the Titans on the ropes. But Boylan (24-15) did not fade away.
Roscoe was replaced by Anthony Albano, and the Titans battled back. They got a run in the bottom of the fifth to stay alive, and then Anthony Scalise and Henry Maier each had RBI singles in the sixth. McDermott’s two-run shot over the left-field fence keyed the rest of that rally.
The Titans scratched one more across in a mini rally in the seventh, but the game ended on a strikeout shortly after.
Still, Boylan suffered through a 1-7 midseason stretch that had them at 14-13, but they regrouped in a big way, finishing the regular season and postseason on a 10-2 tear. Boylan, which went just 10-8 in NIC-10 play this year, then went further than any other NIC-10 team in the postseason.
McDermott’s bat helped fuel that run.
“This postseason run was something special, that’s for sure,” McDermott said. “With only three seniors, too. We lived up to Boylan’s expectations pretty good.”
Winnebago is one-hit in its finale
Winnebago, which put up 16 runs in a sectional semifinal victory over Aurora Christian, came up with just one hit against Harvest-Westminster’s St. Louis. Dax James smacked a single in the fourth, but that was it for Winnebago.
And while AJ Rundblade was sharp on the mound for Winnebago (22-12), Harvest-Westminster chipped away, plating one in the first, one in the third and another in the sixth to hang on.
“He just has that bulldog mentality up there,” Adams said about Rundblade, who gave up just four hits, “and he fought the whole way. All of our guys did. We just couldn’t break him.”
Winnebago will return eight of its starters next year, and 12 players who got extensive playing time in the postseason.
Jay Taft is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at jtaft@rrstar.com and sign up for the Rockford High School Sports Newsletter here at rrstar.com. Jay has covered a variety of sports, from the Chicago Bears and Blackhawks to local youth sports, since the turn of the century at the Register Star.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Boylan, Winnebago baseball teams knocked out of sectional championships
Reporting by Jay Taft, Rockford Register Star / Rockford Register Star
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By Jay Taft, Rockford Register Star | USA TODAY Network
