SOUTH BEND – Three plays at the plate defined New Prairie’s 6-4 win vs. Penn in a Northern Indiana Conference (NIC) baseball game Wednesday, May 13 at Four Winds Field.
The first was a perfectly executed relay in the top of the fifth inning when the score was knotted up at three apiece. Kingsmen senior Ben Dhaemers ripped a single to center field with a runner on second base, and when that runner was waved around third base in an attempt to score, Cougars senior center fielder Ryley Conley hit senior first baseman Colton Griffiths who fired to senior catcher Reed Robinson in time for the out.
Next was junior third baseman Jagger Daniels, who cleanly fielded a grounder from Penn senior Dalton Zultanski and immediately threw a strike to Robinson at the plate to nab the runner who tried to score from 90 feet in the top of the sixth inning.
Lastly, and most consequentially of all, two Kingsmen runners stood in scoring position in the top of the seventh inning. New Prairie held a 6-3 lead, and there were two outs. All that was in the way of senior starting pitcher Sullivan Kress and the Cougars of a victory was Penn sophomore Panayoti Limberopoulos, who already had an RBI single earlier in the game.
He did his part again in the biggest at-bat of the game, lacing a single into left field that easily scored the first runner. Then, Kingsmen head coach Greg Dikos waved his arm to send the second runner in an attempt to move Limberopoulos to second base and cut New Prairie’s lead to just 6-5.
Cougars senior left fielder Bryce Grzeskowiak had different ideas, bypassing a cut-off to throw directly to Robinson at home plate to nail the runner and end the game.
New Prairie had beaten the Kingsmen, and they had done it for the second night in a row after winning 4-0 Tuesday.
This marked the first time Penn had lost two straight games since April 2024 and the first time it had lost two consecutive NIC games since May 2023. New Prairie certainly celebrated like it.
“Our group is very resilient, and they’re very confident,” head coach Mark Schellinger said. “If you’re going to be confident, you better put in the work to back it up, and they do. We talked in the outfield after the game, ‘The plays that were made today weren’t made today. They were made through preparation.’”
This victory created a three-way tie atop the conference standings in the loss column, with South Bend Saint Joseph joining the Cougars and Kingsmen with two losses each. New Prairie has no NIC games remaining, but Penn still has to play the Huskies next week, May 18 and 19.
The conference crown will belong to New Prairie if Penn wins either game based on the head-to-head run differential tiebreaker implemented by the NIC. Meanwhile, Saint Joseph will take the NIC championship if it can sweep the Kingsmen. The Huskies and Cougars split their regular season series, but the former leads in run differential 11-6.
“Most games are not won, they’re lost,” Dikos, a six-time state champion, said. “We made some key mistakes and poor coaching decisions — we can’t have that. We have to be better than that. We’ll get there. That’s a very good team. There’s no shame in that.”
Even if his team didn’t come out on top, Dikos said the value of playing in close games at neutral sites against good competition in the regular season is priceless. With Penn coming into the week as the fifth-ranked team in Class 4A according to the Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association (IHSBCA), these victories cemented the Cougars as a real team to watch in the Class 3A state tournament two years after winning their first state title.
In fact, Robinson said he felt a lot of similarities between Wednesday’s game and New Prairie’s championship win vs. Brebeuf Jesuit at Victory Field in Indianapolis his sophomore year.
“Our crowd, our dugout, we know what it means,” Robinson said. “This felt like a playoff type of game, it was a playoff type of atmosphere. I think it sets us up for when we do go to the playoffs. It felt like the state championship game, to be honest. The atmosphere on that last play was just electric.”
Eleven of New Prairie’s 20 players listed on its varsity roster are seniors. Robinson, a Northern Illinois University commit, may be the de facto leader of that group, but they have all been integral toward sustaining success throughout their time in the program.
Whether it was laying down bunts against Penn’s starting pitcher, senior Purdue University commit Cayden Stockbridge, stealing bases or making those heads-up plays on defense, Schellinger said it was experience that New Prairie used most to its advantage when it came to fending off a Kingsmen squad he knew was going to claw back toward victory until the very end. Robinson said simply knowing the Cougars were capable of beating Penn, having done it the day before, gave them extra confidence they parlayed into another victory against their conference foe Wednesday.
That’s the winning culture that has been built in New Carlisle, and these crucial wins vs. one of the perennial programs in the state — let alone the area — prove the culture is going to continue paying dividends come June if New Prairie can get past Saint Joseph in the first round of sectional play May 30.
“That’s what coach Schellinger has always built us on,” Robinson said. “Being able to bond together — we’ve played with each other since we were like six years old — definitely helps. We’re all best friends.”
Kyle Smedley is a sports reporter at the South Bend Tribune. Contact him via email at ksmedley@usatodayco.com or follow him on X @KyleMSmedley.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Experienced New Prairie earns signature NIC baseball win vs Penn
Reporting by Kyle Smedley, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
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