POPLAR GROVE, Ill.—North Boone baseball head coach Andrew Baden gathered his team up following Wednesday afternoon’s season opener against Woodstock North and was brutally honest with them.
“That was about as perfect of a first game as they come,” Baden said with a smile.
Senior Eli Lopez delivered a stellar start from the mound, senior Matt Self closed the game out and the Vikings racked up seven hits in a 10-0 win over the Thunder.
“We played loose and we played confident,” Lopez said. “We did the little things, threw strikes, made our plays and came up with hits when we needed them. We don't need to hit ten home runs to win the game. We pieced together a couple hits, a couple steals and a couple of good bunts in there.”
It started with a great outing from Lopez, who wanted to be the one taking the mound on opening day.
“He wanted it pretty bad,” Baden said. “And he went out and performed. He was aggressive. And attacked the strike zone with three different pitches. He's everything that you could ask for in a senior veteran. He's poised, a good teammate, and a smart kid.”
Lopez, working on a 60-pitch count from Baden to save his arm for the upcoming weekend’s slate of games, went 4 2-3 innings and only allowed one hit and one walk. He struck out five in the shutout.
“The last couple of weeks I've just been throwing five or six times a week to get the arm in shape,” Lopez said. “My goal is to throw strikes and get guys out.I was trying to keep it minimal, the least amount of walks and hits as possible, let my guys make plays. And they made no errors today, so they backed me up well.”
Baden credited his crew with coming out ready to play. Early-season jitters seemed non-existent for the Vikings, who didn’t commit an error in the field or make any silly mistakes on the basepaths.
“It's impossible to play clean baseball with only two weeks of practice, which means that these guys have been working for 12 months,” the head coach said. “We've had two weeks of IHSA practices, but these guys are in the cage constantly and a lot of them play in the summer. They take reps on their own and play catch with each other outside of here.”
North Boone got the scoring started in the bottom of the third. Quinn Danner drew a leadoff walk and was replaced at first by Margarito Espain on a fielder’s choice. JJ Ford drew a walk shortly after Espain stole second, and he scored after Lopez hit a grounder to the third baseman, who overthrew the first base bag.
RJ Wolski made it 3-0 with a bloop single into right field.
Lopez walked Trevor Mark to start the fourth but was caught stealing by Wolski. Shane Buening smacked a double into deep right field but Lopez got Parker Neff to ground out and keep Woodstock off the board.
North Boone piled it on in the fourth. Ben Neri, who finished 2-for-3 with a pair of RBI, made it 4-0 on when his soft hit into left field dropped and allowed Owen Meredith, who had walked, to score.
Espain put down a bunt and Mark, pitching in relief of Neff, overthrew the first baseman and allowed Matt Self, who had walked, to come home.
Ford followed with a two-run double that dropped along the right-field line and Lopez hit a laser into center field for a one-run single.
“We're gonna have a lineup this year that — you're not going to see the same two or three names be the ones in the box score every single game,” Baden said. “Some days it's going to be the top of the order that does damage, sometimes it's going to be the 7-8-9 guys or the guys in the middle. We've got a lot of guys that can do some different things to help us out.”
Self got the final out of the fifth and the Vikings sent everyone home early in the bottom half of the frame after Neri scored Meredith on a hard-hit single that hit off reliever Jack Wollpert’s foot and Jack Christensen scored Self, who had doubled, on a soft fielder’s choice to the pitcher.
“With all the preparation we put in, it feels great,” said Lopez about starting the year off with a win. “These boys have been working off season and basically all their lives playing baseball. They're all athletes that play multiple sports, but come baseball time, they're always ready to go. And yeah, this was pretty much as close to perfect as it could be.”
NORTH BOONE 10, WOODSTOCK NORTH 0
Woodstock N. 000 00 — 0 1 3
NB 003 52 — 10 7 0
Leading hitters: Woodstock, Buening 1x2. NB, Neri 2x3, 2 RBI, 1 Run; Lopez 2x3, 1 RBI; Ford 1x3, 2 RBI, 2 Runs; Wolski 1x3, 2 RBI; Self 1x2, 2 Runs; Espain 0x2, 2 Runs. 2B: Buening, Ford, Self.
Pitching (ip-h-r-er-bb-so): Woodstock, Neff (L) 3.0-2-3-2-2, Mark 1.0-3-5-1-2, Wollpert 0.0-2-2-2-1-0. NB, Lopez 4.2-1-0-0-1-5, Self 0.1-0-0-0-1-0.
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