From 0 to 2? How North Boone can win first sectional titles in any traditional sport
North Boone has never won a sectional title in any sport except cheerleading and bass fishing (once each) in school history.
It could win two in one day this week. The baseball team rolled over Port Byron Riverdale 8-3 in Wednesday’s Class 2A Byron Sectional semifinals. The Vikings will now play Sterling Newman (24-4) for the title at 11 a.m. Saturday. Also Wednesday, the softball team beat Manlius Bureau Valley 12-0 and will now play Richmond-Burton for the Marengo Sectional title at 4:30 p.m. Friday.
You could see the softball rise coming. North Boone is 107-27 in its last five softball seasons, with two Big Northern titles and one runner-up finish in its last three years.
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But the baseball team has never won a BNC title. It had not won 20 games in more than 30 years. It just graduated the player who brought the Vikings back to baseball relevance, 6-foot-5 left-hander Chandler Alderman, who leads NCAA Division I Middle Tennessee State in strikeouts and innings pitched as a freshman.
If the Vikings can beat Sterling Newman on Saturday, that would be like the 1994 Bulls winning another NBA title while Michael Jordan was playing baseball, instead of losing in the second round to the Knicks.
“It’s pretty incredible to say out loud we lost the best player in program history and somehow we’re better,” North Boone coach Andrew Baden said. “But we were young. We brought a lot back. Chandler was part of what built our program. It is cool to see the program keep growing.”
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The Vikings (26-8) expect the program to keep growing after what they are doing this year.
“We have really inspired a lot of the younger guys coming up,” said Eli Lopez, a four-year starter who threw a complete game against a Riverdale team that had upset Big Northern champion Byron in last week’s regional. “I know when I started we had Big Chandler, and that really pumped everybody up to play their best. Playing behind him you want to play your best. It seeped into all the guys.”
The Vikings now have that same kind of confidence in Lopez. He had never pitched a playoff game before this year but now has two complete games in North Boone’s three playoff wins.
“Our guy on the mound absolutely shut them down,” Baden said.
“Every time he is on the mound,” junior all-conference shortstop JJ Ford said, “I know we are going to win the game. He got hit by a pitch today and also hit by a line drive right back at him. He just bounces back from everything.”
Ford’s two-run triple helped North Boone rally from a 3-0 deficit in the last two innings to win 4-3 in its last game. There was no drama this time. The first three batters of the game — Lopez, Matt Self and Chris Doetch — scored to put the Vikings ahead 3-0. Four runs in the fourth made it 7-0.
Doetch had two hits. Six other Vikings had one hit apiece. Six had an RBI. Only Doetch had two.
“We haven’t won games this year because we have one or two guys who are amazing,” Baden said. “That’s how we scored our runs tonight. It wasn’t one or two guys doing damage. One through nine, we have guys who are tough outs, who put balls in play, who hit balls hard. It’s hard for other pitchers. There is no point in the game where they can take a deep breath and say they have a couple of easy at-bats coming up. We don’t. It’s hard to pitch to us. We’re pretty deep. That’s why we’ve made a run.”
Sterling Newman 7, Stillman Valley 2
In the first semifinal, Stillman took a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the second and held it until the fifth. Newman scored three runs in the top of the fifth, one more in the sixth and two in the seventh to pull away late. Stillman Valley (21-13) finished with only five hits. Leadoff hitter Kaenen McDevitt had both RBIs for Stillman.
Sterling Newman (24-4) has won three straight sectional titles and finished third in the state last year, but all three of those playoff runs were in Class 1A. Stillman walked Notre Dame recruit Brendan Tunink three times. He was 1-for-2 with two runs scored
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: North Boone reaches sectional baseball final; Stillman can't hold lead
