Steeleville takes third in wood bat tournament

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[On Tuesday, July 7 the 2nd Annual Harold Harmsen Wooden Bat Tournament came to a close. The two remaining games were Steeleville versus Pinckneyville and Steeleville versus Sparta. The first game of the night featured a pitchers duel that Steeleville won 1-0 on a walk-off sacrifice fly in the bottom of the eighth.

Pinckneyville came into the game with a 0-2 record in the tournament, while Steeleville sat at 0-1. Jason Becker started on the hill for Steeleville and was matched up against Drew Dudek of Pinckneyville.

Steeleville had a chance to score in the bottom of the second when Matt Bunselmeyer came up to the plate with one out and the bases loaded. Bunselmeyer, though, popped out to the pitcher and Dudek was able to get Chris Kern to ground out to end the inning. In the top of the fourth Pinckneyville put runners on second and third with only one out, but Becker struck out Christian Shopinski before getting Adam Barczewski to pop out. In the bottom of the fifth inning Steeleville threatened to score again, but came up empty-handed when Bunselmeyer was thrown out at home by a good relay throw from Jeff Thornton on David Winters' single.

In the bottom of the eighth Dudek was lifted for relief pitcher Matthew Nichols. Kern led off the inning with a single and then stole second base. With Kern on second Winters squared around and laid down a beautiful bunt that was so good Winters was able to beat the throw to first, putting runners on first and third. Winters then stole second to put runners on second and third with nobody out. Pinckneyville elected not to intentionally walk Ben Vogt, that would have loaded the bases to create a force out at any base. Vogt made them pay when he lifted a fly ball to centerfield that was deep enough to score the speedy Kern from third base to give Steeleville the walk-off win.

Becker threw eight dominate innings, striking out six, walking none and allowing only two hits to pick up his third victory of the year. Winters was 2-4, Mitchell Huseman was 2-2, Kern was 1-3 with a run, Vogt was 1-2 with the game winning RBI, and Keith Kettner and Bunselmeyer each collected a hit.

Sparta takes second with win over Steeleville

With both teams coming in at 1-1 for the tournament, Sparta put together a big third inning to beat Steeleville 9-1 in the final game of the wood bat tournament.

Steeleville quickly jumped ahead in the top of the first inning against Sparta pitcher Matt Schwartz. Chris Kern led off with a walk and then stole second base. After Schwartz struck out the next two batters, Jason Becker singled to right center field to score Kern and give Steeleville the early advantage.

The lead would hold until the bottom of the third. Sparta sent ten batters to the plate and tallied six runs in the inning against Steeleville pitcher Luke Kilgore. The inning was highlighted by a couple of two RBI doubles, one by Brad Stirnaman and the other by Kale Hubert.

Sparta tacked on another run in the fifth and two more in the sixth inning on a couple of errors and an RBI single by Kyle Wahl. Schwartz threw the complete game and struck out ten batters for Sparta.

Ben Vogt collected a hit and Becker had a hit and an RBI for Steeleville.

Sparta took home second place with a 2-1 record, Steeleville came in third with a 1-2 record and Pinckneyville took fourth place with an 0-3 record.