Lisle Baseball Sets First-Ever State Finals Trip with Supersectional Win

The Lisle High School Lions baseball program booked their program’s first-ever trip to the Illinois 2A state finals—the Final Four of Illinois 2A baseball—with a 5-4 hang-on win against the Beecher Bobcats (15-15) on Monday at Benedictine University.

According to the Suburban Life, the Lions (21-10) made the most of their opportunities and Beecher errors, scoring their five runs on only four hits, while limiting the damage of Beecher’s 11 hits to just the four runs.

Lisle scored two runs in the fifth inning to open up a 5-2 lead, but gave them back unearned in the sixth—leaving it up to Lions southpaw Ryan Van Volkenberg to get the save with a 1-2-3 seventh and send the Lions to states, the Northwest Indiana Times said. 

“I’ve been trying to do this since my freshman year,” Van Volkenberg told the Southtown Star. “We finally did it. It’s an amazing feeling.”

Lions pitcher Alex Ventrella got the win behind the bats of Cliff Krause (2-3 with two runs and an RBI double) and Brian Czyl (1-3, two RBIs), with Jake Oard and Kevin Coppin also adding RBIs and Bailey Welch a run, the Suburban Life reports. 

“It’s a long time coming,” Lisle coach Pete Meyer told the Star. “Every year we felt like we had an opportunity to do this. This year, we talked about taking one pitch, one at-bat, one game at a time. These guys had the mentality that we could beat anybody.”

Read more at the Suburban Life, the Southtown Star and the Northwest Indiana Times.

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