Congrats to Kaneland High School for winning the Illinois state 3A baseball championship.
I was fortunate enough to be involved with the program as a freshman baseball coach when we first moved to Illinois back in 2005 and you could see then that the program had all the ingredients to make such a run possible. All they lacked at the time was a prior history of winning, but the kids seemed enthusiastic about reversing the fortunes of the program from top to bottom.
Hard-working, high character, athletic, hard-working kids and enthusiastic, supportive, involved parents who are positive complements to the coaching staffs.
It was welcome news to see that the program was able to reach the mountain top.
KANELAND HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL - 2011 ILLINOIS STATE 3A CHAMPIONS - CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!!
Kaneland shuts down opponent’s stars - DailyHerald.com:
"Frustrated? Sure, but that was nothing compared to what Oak Forest’s No. 3 hitter Tim Barry had to say Saturday. Barry, entering with his 12 home runs, went 1-for-4 with just a seventh-inning single.
“Very frustrating because every high school pitcher has to pitch around me because they are a bunch of babies,” Barry said. “They can’t test their abilities against a really good hitter, especially myself. A really good pitcher can pitch against a really good hitter no matter what.”
Babies? I think state champion is a better way to describe Kaneland pitchers Drew Peters and Kyle Davidson.
Or intelligent pitchers doing what needs to be done to win a game ... and doing it in high pressure situations like Barry’s first 2 at-bats.
Barry obviously was focused on the game Saturday and not all the IHSA “Add-A-Tude” commercials that kept flashing on the big scoreboard. Otherwise he would know it’s not good sportsmanship to call the pitchers that just beat you “babies,” and it’s not Kaneland’s job to give you more than “one fastball in my zone” — it’s Kaneland’s job to get you out and win the game."
Barry came up in both the first and third innings with two runners on base, and both times Peters retired him. First on a pop-up to second baseman Brian Dixon, the next time on a comebacker that Peters turned into a 1-6-3, inning-ending double play.
“I knew he was their big hitter,” Peters said. “I knew I had to be careful with him. I was pitching him low, outside. The ball moves a lot I guess, he couldn’t get quite on it. I got him out pretty easily but there were some other guys I couldn’t get out as easily. Overall it was great.”
Several teams have walked Barry intentionally this year. Kaneland went after him and it worked. Getting out of those early jams proved to be a momentum boost in the Knights’ 11-3 victory.
“We weren’t going to let him beat us,” Aversa said. “We handled him perfectly today. The park is big enough we had confidence in our guys. We’re going to challenge guys.”
Some of the comments cited above by the were quite interesting and I wonder if some of them had to do with the aftermath of the ML Draft. Barry, who was one of the more highly rated prospects in the state, amazingly went undrafted. It's possible he may have expressed a strong desire to go to college or was called on draft day and he could not come to terms with a ream or teams who expressed interest.
It is a shame that the timing of the event over shadows and effects both HS State Tournaments across the country and the College World Series in that kids have their focus shifted from their team's success to individual fortunes.
Overall, I think this years crop of local players were horribly undervalued by the draft and I'm not sure if the miserable weather that permeated the area for virtually the entire season hurt local prospects efforts to be seen by scouts under anything resembling near ideal baseball conditions.
New Trier OF Charlie Tilson, as expected was drafted early, #79 overall.
RHP Nick Burdi surprisingly lasted until #748. That's ridiculous!!
Barry as mentioned was not drafted. Ludicrous!!
SS Jake Junis (876) and RHP Joey Ceja (#1153) went way lower than expected.
RHP Nic Hibbing was selected #1262 and St. Charles East LHP Wes Benjamin was selected #1469.
Quite a few players who were equally well regarded locally were bypassed entirely. It was amazing how undervalued this years local crop was by TPTB.
I did a blog some time back (titled Baseball Hotbeds of Talent) detailing the importance of warm weather on the production of baseball players historically where we found a relatively high correlation (note below) between average state temperature and success in developing players, but the results of this years draft, specifically the shunning of local Illinois players, seemed a little over the top.
(note - a .5408 correlation which indicates that about 29.25% of the effect on a states ability to produce baseball players can be attributed to Temperature )
Baseball Hotbeds of Talent
http://slavieboy.blogspot.com/2010/07/baseball-hotbeds-of-talent.html
Baseball Players by State vs. Temps
http://www.scribd.com/doc/34586202/Baseball-Players-by-State-vs-Temps
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