:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/shawmedia/V7ETRM7636W6AU4VIMQ73JHALA.jpg)
JOLIET – It’s hard to call a 60-degree day with overcast skies ideal conditions, but as far as Luke Lamm was concerned, it was a beautiful day for a ballgame.
The Plainfield East senior made the most of the warmer weather with a great pitching performance against Joliet Central in a Southwest Prairie Conference game, and the reward for his efforts was his first varsity no-hitter.
Lamm, who struck out eight and walked only the first batter he faced, saw three other Steelmen reach base. One reached on a dropped third strike and two more in the seventh inning on errors. His teammates provided him with plenty of run support by scoring two runs in each of the first three innings, as the Bengals remained hot by claiming a 7-0 road victory.
After walking Central leadoff hitter Nathaniel Magolan, Lamm set down the next eight batters before Magolan reached on a dropped third strike with two outs in the third, but he was thrown out trying to steal second to end the inning. That started another run of 11 straight batters retired before the Bengals made consecutive errors with one out in the seventh.
“Today was beautiful, and I really liked the weather,” said Lamm, who tossed a no-hitter while on the sophomore team. “I felt really good on the mound. My curveball was working, and it hasn’t really been working much in the past, and I was locating my fastballs more and that felt nice. We’ve been used to pitching when it was in the 30s. But I’m really confident to have this defense behind me. I like the energy that we get once we get hyped up. We get really excited, and that’s a good feeling. It would be nice to have some more games like this.”
Beside being thrilled with Lamm’s effort, Bengals coach Adam O’Reel is excited about his team’s fast start. They’re 10-1 overall and 2-0 in the SPC after winning their fourth in a row.
“He walked the first hitter that he faced, but after that he was lights out,” O’Reel said. “He kept the ball down all day and was painting knees, and that made it real difficult on the hitters. And he has tremendous movement on his ball, too, so it’s very hard to just sit on him and guess. He worked ahead, was working down and was mixing speeds. He’s one of our hardest workers and most coachable kids in the program. I can’t be more happy for him.
“We’ve tried our best to keep guys fresh and not go too deep with too many guys and mixing the innings and using the whole staff. We’ve been really good situationally at the plate. We’ve had a lot of two-out knocks all year, but our base running has been a little shakier than I was hoping. But as I told the guys before that last inning, the cleanest game we played all year.”
In East's first, Andrew Hoffmann
(2 for 4) singled in Dylan Carlson
(2 for 4), and then scored on a bases-loaded walk to Matt Pratscher. An inning later, Dalton Crowder tripled home Sean Rivera, and then scored on an error to make it 4-0.
The Bengals added two more runs in the third when Jacob Havis scored on a sacrifice fly by Sean Blanchard, and courtesy runner Drew Raspolich came home on Carlson’s single to left. In the fifth, Blanchard led off with a triple and scored on Rivera’s sacrifice fly.
The big positive for the Steelmen (6-4, 0-2) was that relievers Alexander Gregurich, Diego Martinez, Carlos Garcia and Cole Sebby only allowed five hits and a run in 42/3 innings.
“We told our guys that we have to be more aggressive at the plate, especially early in counts,” Steelmen coach Kevin Fitzgerald said. “Hats off to him, since he knew what we were doing and took full advantage of that. You can’t take anything away from that kid, since he threw a heckuva game. I’m confident that we’re going to be a good baseball team this year. We just have to build every day, and that’s really what we’re focused on doing right now.”