Sports
Minooka Falls to Neuqua Valley
Neuqua Valley 12, Minooka 2—in five innings. Neuqua junior Nick Blackburn goes the distance to keep the Wildcats unbeaten on the young season at 3-0.
Following Wednesday’s 12-2, five-inning thrashing of Minooka Wednesday, baseball coach Robin Renner summed it up thusly.
“We could play that team every day for 30 days in a row, and that would never happen again,” Renner said. “That team is too good. We could play tomorrow and the same thing could happen to us.”
But for Wednesday at least, it was Neuqua that was the better team.
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Behind a strong first outing of the season from junior Nick Blackburn on the mound and an offense that sprayed the ball to all fields, the Wildcats improved to 3-0 while handing Minooka (3-1) its first loss of the season.
“We just didn’t play very well today,” Minooka coach Jeff Petrovic said. “We walked a lot of guys (four, plus a hit batsman). We got behind in a lot of counts and when you have to throw the ball over the middle of the plate, you’re in trouble. Nothing seemed to go our way. We just couldn’t get anything going.”
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Neuqua certainly didn’t have that problem, with 11 of the Wildcats’ first 12 batters reaching base in a seven-run first inning. The big blows were a pair of triples, a two-run triple from Ryan O’Keefe and a three-run triple from Nick Oleskowicz. That chased Minooka starter Dakota Brown after 2/3 of an inning.
It was Brown’s first pitching appearance since his freshman year as the Indians try to replace 2010 Houston Astros first-round pick Mike Foltynewicz on the mound this season.
“Dakota is a great baseball player,” Petrovic said. “We’re a little weak pitching this year, so we felt that we needed to maybe see if we could get him back on the bump a little bit. Today just didn’t work out for him. His next outing will be better.”
Neuqua blew the game open in the third by posting five more runs and batting around. A two-run double from Jeff Samuel and RBI doubles from Jack Amaro and Drew Bailey keyed that rally.
That helped Blackburn settle in. He went all five innings, allowing two runs on five hits. He struck out six and walked two.
“I felt good,” Blackburn said. “I feel like I can do better, get ahead of more hitters. My defense played well (Neuqua played error-free ball). I just wanted to make sure I got ahead of batters, make sure they put it in play, let my defense make plays like they did. I feel like our defense is the strongest part of the team. When they’re good, we’re good.”
Blackburn’s performance was a welcomed sight for Renner, who is counting on him to be one of the team’s top three starters this spring. Renner started seeing his turnaround late in the summer season.
“Last summer, he was not very good,” Renner said. “His last two starts of the summer were like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ We had to play Wheaton North in the summer state tournament to make it to the final eight. They scored 14 the day before and 12 the day before that. Here, I’ve got Nick Blackburn, who hasn’t been very good, and he shuts them out.”