Sun Prairie pulls away from Craig to win sectional baseball title

John Barry, The Janesville Gazette, Wis.
·4 min read

Jun. 22—SUN PRAIRIE — Sometimes you just have to tip your cap and admit that the better team won.

That was the case Monday for Janesville Craig's baseball team.

Top-ranked Sun Prairie proved to be as good as advertised as it rolled past Craig 15-2 in a WIAA Division 1 sectional final game. The Cardinals scored 11 runs in the third inning, as the Cougars simply ran out of gas after a hard-fought 15-9 win over Milton in the semifinal game.

Sun Prairie 26-2 advanced to the state tournament for fifth time in the last seven season and will likely grab the No. 1 seed when state pairings are announced today.

Craig finished 16-9.

"They're an outstanding baseball team in all aspects of the game," Craig coach Vic Herbst said of Sun Prairie. "Somebody is going to have play really well to beat them at state because they're so good offensively.

"And for us, I don't think anybody in our conference or anybody in our area thought we would get this far because we're so young."

Craig scored first against Sun Prairie when Jake Schaffner led off the game with a bloop double and eventually scored on Patrick Schork's RBI groundout.

Sun Prairie took the lead for good with two runs in the bottom of the first and broke the game open in the third by sending 17 batters to the plate.

Josh Caron, who hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning, drove in two runs with a single and finished with four RBI. The Cardinals finished with five extra-base hits in the game.

The Milton and Craig game was a back-and-forth affair.

Craig scored two runs in the top of the first, but Milton answered back thanks to a towering three-run homer from Luke Hessenauer.

The Cougars took what seemed to be a comfortable 9-3 lead into the third thanks to a seven-run outburst. Aiden Schenk and Isaac Stried each doubled in the inning, while four Milton errors opened the floodgates.

"We always seem to have that one bad inning against Craig, and we just can't get away from it," Milton coach Kris Agnew said. "But to the guys' credit, they bounced back and got right back into it."

Milton tied the game with a run in the fourth and five more in the fifth. Hessenauer walked with the bases loaded to pick up his fourth RBI of the game in the fifth, and Charlie Terrill added an RBI double.

Craig scored three runs in the sixth to take the lead for good and added three more in the seventh, highlighted by triples from Patrick Schork and Isaac Stried.

"I just loved how our guys competed against Milton," Herbst said. "We got off to a good start, but to their credit, they came back and tied it. We were able to answer back, and we were hoping that momentum would carry over into the Sun Prairie game.

"But as it turns out, we just didn't have enough in the cupboard today. We used three pitchers the first game, and that took a lot out of us when you're facing a team that can hit the ball like Sun Prairie can."

SUN PRAIRIE 15, CRAIG 2 (5)

Janesville Craig 100 10—2 4 1

Sun Prairie 20(11) 2x—15 9 0

Schenk, Schork (2), Ryan (2), Schmitz (4); Hunley, Hamilton (4), Caron (5)

Leading hitters—Udelhofen (C) 2x2, Shepard (SP) 2x4, Caron (SP) 3x4. 2B—Schaffner (C), I. Stried (C), Caron (SP), Shepard (S), Moreno (SP). HR—Caron (SP)

SO—Schenk 2, Schork 2, Schmitz 1, Hamilton 1, Caron 3. BB—Schenk 3, Schork 2, Ryan 3, Schmitz 1, Hamilton 1, Caron 1

CRAIG 15, MILTON 9

Janesville Craig 207 003 3—15 11 0

Milton 300 150 0—9 12 5

Ryan, Schork (4), Schenk (4); E. Jackson, B. Jackson (3), Campion (6)

Leading hitters—Schaffner (C) 2x4, Adams (C) 2x4, Schork (C) 2x4, I. Stried (C) 2x5, Terrill (M) 2x5, Campbell (M) 2x3, Hessenauer (M) 2x3, Daskham (M) 2x4. 2B—Schork (C), Schenk (C), I. Stried (C), Havens (M), Terrill (M). 3B—Schork (C), I. Stried (C). HR—Hessenauer (M)

SO—Ryan 4, Schenk 4, B. Jackson 2, Campion 3. BB—Ryan 2, Schork 1, Schenk 2, E. Jackson 2, Campion 1