Gators' bats come alive

Crystal Lake South’s James Vazquez (center) is congratulated by his teammates after hitting a home run in the third inning of the Gators’ 12-6 Fox Valley Conference crossover victory against Huntley on Wednesday in Crystal Lake. (Sandy Bressner photo)

CRYSTAL LAKE – Crystal Lake South’s hitting approach was good, and its execution was even better.

The Gators, stymied one day earlier by Johnsburg’s C.J. Fiedorowicz, took out any lingering angst on Huntley with 16 hits in their 12-6 victory in a Fox Valley Conference crossover baseball game Wednesday at The Swamp.

Ryan Kelley triggered the onslaught with a two-run home run in the first, Tony Pauls homered in the second and James Vazquez hit another two-run shot in the third for South (6-2), which lost to Johnsburg, 4-2, on Tuesday.

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“We focused on shooting the ball the other way,” Kelley said, “not swinging at the pitcher’s pitch, making your at-bat worth something.” Kelley was 4-for-4 with four RBIs, and Vazquez, hitting one spot ahead of him at No. 2, was 3-for-4 with four RBIs. Both players had two doubles to go with their homers.

“It’s something a little new for me, in the No. 3 spot,” said Kelley, who led off last season. “I’m trying to focus on hitting the ball hard the other way.”

Vazquez, who scored in each of the first four innings, said he didn’t realize the ball cleared the left-center field fence until he passed second base.

“I was just trying to get on base,” Vazquez said. “We were seeing the ball well; we were really on today. All nine of us did our parts.”

Huntley (9-5) scored one run in each of the first six innings, which wasn’t enough to keep up with South’s high-powered offense.

“We had better approaches at the play,” Gators coach Brian Bogda said. “Most of them were line-drive shots. We wanted to shoot the ball up the gap, that was the mindset. Pretty much up and down the lineup we did a good job of hitting.”

Bogda also lauded reliever Wes Evans, who worked four innings and allowed three runs, but didn’t walk a batter and struck out six.

“Wes kept them off-balance and threw strikes,” Bogda said. “That’s just what we needed, throw strikes and get outs.”

Sean Wilson had three hits, and Pauls has two hits and two RBIs for the Gators. Zach Liebman was the Red Raiders’ only player with two hits. Huntley used five pitchers to get through the game.

“Crystal Lake South is a very good hitting team, and our pitchers left pitches up,” Huntley coach Andy Jakubowski said. “And we couldn’t make plays in the field. We were awful in all three aspects of the game, and we got beat.”