LINCOLN — Painting the picture won’t do it justice, so here’s the first thing Mahomet-Seymour baseball coach Nic DiFilippo said after walking off the field on Saturday.
“If that’s not the greatest game I’ve ever been a part of, I don’t know what is,” DiFilippo said. “Both teams deserved it. It just sucks that somebody had to lose.”
That unlucky team happened to be the Bulldogs.
On the fortunate end was Champaign Central, with Luke McClure living out every kid’s backyard dream scenario. The senior hit a walk-off solo home run to right field in the bottom of the 11th inning to give the Maroons a 1-0 win in the Class 3A Lincoln Sectional championship and send them to the Elite Eight.
“I was running the bases, and I kind of blacked out,” McClure said. “I just wanted to win. I wasn’t expecting to hit a home run, but after a bit, I was like ‘Oh yeah, that’s gone.’”
Ironically enough, in a game that was scoreless until that moment, one of McClure’s fellow seniors called it.
“I knew it was gone off the bat,” Patrick Kennedy said. “Right before he hit it, I said ‘We just need Luke or Carter (Bleakney) to get ahold of one.’ The next pitch, it was gone. It felt amazing.”
That’s how it ended, and the 10-plus innings and nearly three hours of baseball that led up to it were just as good.
From the very first batter of the game, you knew it was going to be a battle. M-S (23-12) leadoff man Cam Heinold stayed alive for 10 pitches before Kennedy ultimately got him to ground out to third base.
Kennedy retired the next two batters, setting up Max Young to do the same on the other side. The M-S junior struck out the first two Maroons (26-12-1) he faced and got the third to fly out. Three up, three down to start the game for both teams, and there was already a feeling around the ballpark that these pitchers could keep it rolling.
“I was definitely locked in,” Kennedy said. “I tried not to think about it too much so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed by the emotions. I just stuck to my game and really focused on putting every pitch where I wanted it to go.”
And that’s exactly what happened. Kennedy didn’t allow a single baserunner until a two-out walk by Nolan Johnson in the fourth inning, and he kept a no-hitter going until a two-out bunt single by Paxson O’Malley in the fifth. Central’s ace ended up tossing eight shutout innings with seven strikeouts and only two hits allowed before the IHSA’s pitch-count limit prevented him from going any further.
Young matched that performance pitch for pitch. The M-S junior pitched seven shutout frames with 10 strikeouts, also only giving up two hits.
Young said he knew he was going to get this opportunity when he didn’t close out Thursday’s semifinal win over Chatham Glenwood. Senior Mason Orton pitched the first six innings of that game, striking out nine batters and allowing just three hits. Seeing that, Young knew what he had to do on Saturday.
“That’s what he does, and I wanted to go out there and do the same thing as him,” Young said. “Ever since I found out I was starting, I had a different mindset. I knew exactly what I was going to do, and everything came together. It’s what I’ve been working for all year. We compete with Central every time. Everybody was amped, everybody wanted to be there and everybody came to play. It obviously didn’t go how we wanted, but it was a ballgame. I loved every pitch of it.”
Central coach John Staab said he knew M-S’s pitching staff had more to it than just Orton, who will be playing for Northern Illinois University next year, and he needed his players to understand that.
“Obviously, Orton threw really well against Chatham, and he’s their guy. I didn’t want my guys to have the mindset of ‘We’re not facing Orton,’” Staab said. “I told them ‘Look, they’ve got plenty of arms over there. We’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing. Don’t make it more than it is.’”
Miles Woolsey took the mound for M-S after Young, pitching 3 ⅓ innings of one-hit, five-strikeout ball until McClure ended it. He was the other Bulldog pitcher who could have gotten the start on Saturday, but DiFilippo erred on the side of caution. Woolsey got sick a couple weeks ago and still wasn’t 100 percent. On top of that, he had a “little rough” outing against Central on May 24, a game the Maroons won 6-5 on a walk-off RBI single by Johnny Timmons. With all that in mind, M-S went with Young.
“Max has been getting better and better and better, so we just kept rolling with him,” DiFilippo said. “He pitched good enough to win. Fantastic job. I can’t talk enough about how great Max Young pitched. So did Kennedy. Both of those guys were absolutely dealing. Just thank him for everything he’s done. Can’t wait for everything he does for us next year.”
After his seven innings on the mound, Young also threw one last strike to home plate, but this one was from the outfield. Central’s Bleakney hit a single to right field in the bottom of the eighth inning, and Nic Bralts tried to score from second base to end the game right there, but Young’s throw was on the money to cut down the scoring chance and extend the game.
Finishing the game on the mound for Central was none other than McClure, who went three scoreless innings with three strikeouts and three hits allowed.
All in all, there were 75 total plate appearances between the Maroons and Bulldogs, and only nine of them resulted in hits.
“The pitchers dominated in a high-pressure situation time and time again,” Staab said. “In that type of game, you felt like it would take one swing to end it. Thank God we got it first.”
McClure’s game-winning homer, which Staab said he prayed to stay fair as it hooked toward the foul pole, was just the latest splash of heroics in what has become one of the best rivalries in the area. Timmons had the walk-off hit a couple weeks ago, the Bulldogs won on a walk-off walk in last year’s sectional championship and Central scored two runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to win it back in 2022.
“These two schools have traditions that are really rolling,” Staab said. “They’ve won five regionals in a row, and so have we. The last four times we’ve played have all been walkoffs. Still can’t believe that just happened sitting here 10 minutes later. This is as good as it gets when it comes to rivalries.”
This is Central’s fourth sectional title in program history, joining the teams of 2023, 2017 — a team that also placed fourth in 3A — and 1968. To get back to the state finals, the Maroons will need to beat Triad (30-6), which got the best of them 15-4 back on March 21, in Monday’s super-sectional matchup at Millikin University. That’s where M-S bowed out last year, and DiFilippo has his money on his fellow Champaign County school to earn a third plaque of the postseason.
“It does feel like a state championship. Everything is on the line, and the kids are playing their hearts out,” DiFilippo said. “This is what you want from this point on. Every game is going to be tougher. I don’t know who won the other game, but they better be ready because it’s coming.”
The Maroons will have Sunday to regroup. How they’ll do that is still a wonder. The emotions that come with a walk-off home run and an 11-inning pitchers’ duel will certainly be hard to come down from, but they’ll be ready.
“A couple more deep breaths,” McClure said. “We’ve got to realize that we still have more games. That was like a state championship, but we’ve got more work to do. Three more games. As cool as that was, we’re on to the next one.”
