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Aurora Central Catholic, Rahn, Freeze-Out Lisle 4-1

March 27, 2015

By Drake Skleba
 Senior Writer

March 26, 2015

AURORA, IL - On the frigid Northwest Side of Aurora, Aurora Central Catholic (3-0) and their ace left hander Matt Rahn (2-0) put a feisty, young band of Lisle Lions in the deep-freeze 4-1. Rahn allowed a bloop single in his four shutout innings of work to pick up the win. He struck out eight and walked two.

ACC stole the first run of the ball game in the bottom of the third on some heads-up base running by Charger right fielder Jake Smith. Smith, who had led off the Charger third with a single, was on second base with one out. With Brandon Babler on first after his bloop infield single moved Smith to second, Rahn hit a grounder to Lisle shortstop David White. White flipped to Lion second baseman Alec Van Volkenberg for the force at second. Babler’s legal but hard slide into Van Volkenberg, caused a hesitation by the Lisle infielders, looking for an interference call and an inning-ending double play. The cerebral Smith read the situation and just kept running to home and stole the first run of the game.

“A good quality win for us today. We had solid defense and great pitching to lead us to the win,” Jared Smith said. “Coach (Bieterman) always tells us to play heads-up baseball. I saw them hesitate and I just kept going and got us that first run of the ball game. I had a good quality game at the plate today. We are confident in our abilities to be a very good ballclub. We want to win as many as we can so we can get the top seed in a very competitive regional.”

Rahn would score the second run of the inning on a wild pitch for a 2-0 ACC lead.

“I felt really comfortable on the mound tonight. It wasn’t as cold as I thought it was going to be which was really nice,” Rahn said. “I went out and threw strikes and my off-speed pitches were working well. It was good to get the victory tonight the way we achieved it. We weren’t hitting well but we had great pitching and solid defense. A great team win.”

Lisle (1-2) started their ace right-hander UW Milwaukee-bound George Swedie (0-2). Swedie allowed just one earned run and two hits in his three innings of work on the mound Swedie had three strikeouts and was the hard-luck loser.

Lisle scored their only run of the game against ACC freshman left-hander Sean Sinisko (2IP, 1R, 2H. 0ER.1K) on a successful double steal of home and second, by White and Van Volkenberg in the top of the sixth. Lisle junior right fielder Drew English led the Lion attack with two singles.

The Chargers tacked on a pair of huge insurance runs in the bottom of the sixth. Jake Smith’s booming double plated Chris Saltijeral who had singled. Later in the inning Jared Smith struck again, this time on a perfectly executed suicide squeeze bunt single and RBI, scoring Ryan Poplawski, who had walked.

“I got a fastball on the RBI double and hit it well to get the insurance run in,” Jake Smith said. “I just went out on the mound in the seventh with my sole purpose to wrap up the ball game and I did a good job.”

Jake Smith allowed a bloop single in his scoreless inning on the mound, to wrap up the undefeated Chargers frozen victory.

“We can pitch. We have three guys and even more who can throw,” Bieterman said. “Jared (Smith) set the tone with his great play stealing that first run for us. And then we pick up the second run in the inning and with our pitching and defense we go onto a great win over a very good Lisle team. I really believe we have the potential to be a very good team this spring. Pitching and defense is the main key to winning and that’s what we do.”

“They out-executed us tonight,” Lisle head coach Pete Meyer said. “They did the little things that we couldn’t do to win the game. We just haven’t been able to get the two-out hit. It was a good game and George (Swedie) battled for us and did a good job on the mound.”

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