Baseball: Collin Mowry walks it off for Lincoln-Way Central

LOCKPORT – Something about Ed Flink Field really seems to suit Lincoln-Way Central’s Collin Mowry.

Even though it’s not his home park, Mowry had another multi-home run game, and the second of those blasts allowed Lincoln-Way Central to walk off Lockport for a 7-6 victory Thursday afternoon.

“I’ve had two homers in a game before,” Mowry said. “Here, actually. I like it here.”

Lincoln-Way Central was the home team after the game was moved from the Knights’ home field because their field wasn’t playable, setting up the bottom-of-the-seventh heroics.

Mowry’s theatrics came after a bizarre play on what appeared to be a fairly routine ground ball to first base off the bat of Braden Meyer. The ball hit the base and ricocheted into foul territory, allowing Meyer to reach safely. He came around to score when Mowry swatted his second homer over the right field fence for the game-winner.

“I wasn’t really looking to do that,” Mowry said. “In that situation, you just have to do a job, and I was able to do it.”

It seemed like a fitting end to a contest that had multiple twists and turns. Lockport in the top of the seventh inning broke a 5-all tie with a two-out double by Jake Moerman to give the Porters (7-2) what looked to be the decisive run.

But as it had all game, Lincoln-Way Central (5-3) mounted yet another rally, and Lockport ran out of opportunities to counter.

“That was a good baseball game all around,” Lincoln-Way Central coach Mitch Nowicki said. “They played well. I feel like every time we scored, they battled back, and whenever we scored, they battled back.”

Lincoln-Way Central started the scoring in the bottom of the first when Landon Mensik walloped the first strike he saw over the fence for a 1-0 Knights lead.

Lockport bounced back with a run in the second and two more in the third, relentlessly placing runners on base but only sporadically getting them across for runs.

Even so, it looked like that 3-1 early lead might stand up. After allowing that leadoff home run to Mensik, Lockport starter Dylan Nagle put Lincoln-Way Central’s batters on lockdown until the fifth inning.

Mensik got him again at that point, belting a two-run homer. After Nagle recorded a strikeout, Mowry tattooed another Nagle offering to restore Lincoln-Way Central’s advantage to 4-3.

Lockport went right back to work in the sixth, continuing to apply the pressure. The Porters had a whopping 18 batters reach base in a variety of methods. But only two of them were extra-base hits: a second-inning triple from Giovani Zaragoza and an RBI double from Jake Moerman in the sixth that momentarily gave Lockport the lead back at 6-5.

Lincoln-Way Central’s quartet of pitchers that included Luke Mensik, Ryan Schissler, Gianni Leach and Jack Barrett did just enough to avoid severe trouble despite ample opportunities for things to become much dicier.

“[Lockport] did a really nice job with two strikes, and they hit a lot of balls right back up through the middle on tough counts,” Nowicki said. “We didn’t do that. But we were able to take advantage of some scoring opportunities and two guys at the top of the order that were hot.

“But I was really happy with our pitchers. We didn’t let them compound into big innings. We kind of just limited the extra bases and free opportunities, and that helped us out in the end.”