2 days ago
After getting two hits, South Elgin's Justin Pold pitches inning in relief. Perfect. ‘Just meant everything to me.'
Coming into the season, senior second baseman Justin Pold faced elevated expectations for South Elgin, especially since he had such a solid performance the previous spring.
High school baseball, however, is more of a sprint than a marathon. And when it takes time for things to start clicking, the engine can stall pretty quickly and then start to spiral.
In Pold's case, he pinpointed one of the causes.
'I would say the strikeouts have been hard on me,' Pold said. 'Last year, I had like eight. This year, I have around 18. I just have to put the ball in play, and hopefully, the results will come.'
Pold hung in there, put the ball in play and saw the results Monday, sending the Storm off to a quick start against McHenry in the Class 4A Kane County Cougars Supersectional in Geneva.
Although Pold doubled in the first inning and followed with a two-run single in the second for a 4-0 lead, the Warriors battled back for an 8-6 victory at Northwestern Medicine Field.
Pold, an Elgin Community College recruit, also made a rare pitching appearance for South Elgin (23-11). He came on in relief and got out of a jam in the sixth to keep the Storm alive.
Nathan Kmiec contributed a two-run single, while Jacob Robertson also doubled and scored before adding an RBI single. Kmiec had already made it 2-0 when Pold stepped up in the second.
And Pold's single to right field built a 4-0 advantage.
'It just meant everything to me,' Pold said. 'I was confident going in and got good results.'
It's been a key facet for the Storm in this late-season run, with different contributors every game.
'Next man up,' South Elgin coach Jim Kating said. 'We've done a pretty good job of that in the last two-thirds of the season. I'm very proud of my kids, how they came out.
'We had nothing to lose. We weren't supposed to be anywhere close to where they're at. That's what I enjoyed, the mental toughness and the wanting to win.'
As has been the case all season, the Storm persevered. It didn't matter who was struggling.
'This team is built off of friendships,' Kmiec said. 'We have all these friends on the team picking each other up. In practice, we're on each other. We felt like we could win it the whole time.'
Going into the sixth, the game was tied 5-5, but McHenry (33-4-1) scored three unearned runs to take the lead. Pold stopped the bleeding to keep South Elgin within striking distance.
'That was energetic for sure,' Pold said. 'I only pitched four times before that, so I was not expecting to come in. We needed everyone for sure.
'I feel the momentum definitely shifted to us in the sixth and seventh innings. We just had too many errors. If we clean that up, I think that's our game.'
The Storm ran out of steam trying to continue the coaching career of Kating, who's retiring, for one more weekend. He's the only coach in program history.
'We wanted to do this for him,' Pold said. 'He's been a great coach. He's been everything for us.'
Kating said it hasn't set in yet that it's over, but he's appreciative of everything the program has accomplished in his 18 seasons at South Elgin. He tried to soak it in Monday.
'In the fifth inning, I kind of looked around and said, 'This is fun,'' Kating said. 'This is competition. This is what high school competition is supposed to be like.
'Hopefully, they take some of the stuff they experienced and turn it into life experiences.'
