BASEBALL: Apaches set for post-season
By Dan Harcharik
The baseball team enters sectional playoffs with the No. 3 seed of four teams..
Play is scheduled to begin May 5, but at press time the Apaches didn’t know whether they would be facing No. 2 Sauk Valley or No. 1 Black Hawk.
Last year, the Apaches were eliminated when they faced Black Hawk in the first round of playoffs. This season the IVCC men are 2 – 2 against the Braves in regular season games. After losing both games to Black Hawk on March 22, the Apaches had their revenge beating them twice at their place April 10.
The Apaches are 1 - 3 against Sauk Valley. On April 3, they split and on April 19 lost the doubleheder to Sauk. In the recent matchup, Ryan Baily and Wally Zukowski suffered the loses on the mound.
In their most recent games, the Apache swept a double-header against Spoon River April 29, 7 – 3 and 9 – 8. The wins brought the Apache record to 34 – 18 overall, 12 – 8 in the conference.
"We scored a lot of runs, which we needed," coach Bob Koopmann said. "Joe Sester had been struggling, but he hit two homers."
On April 24 and 26, the Apaches split with conference rival Kishwaukee: 7 – 4, 1 – 3, 2 – 0, 4 – 7. In the second matchup, Jeff Weber picked up the win and Malloy suffered the loss. Weber, an L-P graduate, plans to continue his pitching at St. Francis next year.
Because Kishwaukee is a Division I school, IVCC won't play against the Malta community college in the playoffs.
On April 17, the IVCC men had their fifth and sixth consecutive conference wins against Highland. Dave Nitz picked up his team high seventh win. Dan Malloy picked up the other win for the Apaches.
Games against Olive Harvey on April 28 and Illinois Central on May 5 were canceled.
With the season winding down, recruiting for next year is starting. Second year assistant coach John Cruz said that many high school teams are still playing after IVCC’s season ends, which allows them to look at high school players.
"The first thing is that we recruit heavy in our area first," Cruz said.
Cruz said the Apaches will be losing eight or nine pitchers at the end of this season.