Boys’ Baseball Update

The Urbana Varsity baseball team played Moline Senior High School (Maroons) on Friday, hoping to go to 7-1 on the season. The Tigers started out 5-0, beating the likes of St. Thomas More, Georgetown-Ridgefarm, Oakwood, and a two-win sweep of Kankakee, before losing to Lake Forest. They then went on to beat Lanphier to make their record 6-1, where they were before the game on Friday.

“I would say timely hitting, our pitching doing well, and our defense playing well without making errors,” Assistant Coach Nick Stillwell said on the key to the team’s play to start the season.

The Tigers lost to Moline 9-2. Ben Thompson, Trey Russell, Laquan Grein, Nick Hoffman, Bryan Fink and Dylan Anderson each had one hit. It was 2-0 Moline, when the Maroons scored 4 runs in the sixth inning. The Tigers cut the lead to 6-2 after the sixth inning due to an RBI (Run Batted In) single by Laquan Grein, who also stole home during the same inning to get the Tigers their second run. Moline, though, got those two runs back, and one more in the top of the seventh inning to win 9-2.

“The pitcher was throwing a lot of strikes, and threw a bunch of pitches for strikes, so they had to fight a lot of pitches off,” Stillwell said on the offense not doing so well that afternoon.

“We just saw a lot of good pitches, and he’s their ace, and he threw pretty hard, and he’s one of the [great] pitchers we’ll see this season,” Second Baseman Trey Russell also said on the offense struggling.

The Tiger’s next games are vs. Rantoul and Westville on Saturday (which were canceled) and Charleston on Thursday, and Mahomet-Seymour on Friday, April 8 and 9, respectively.