Raiders baseball gaining valuable experience By SCOTT SCHMID sschmid@shawmedia.com
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Mike Riley Glenbard South coach
a lot of these things we will fix. “The thing we got was good experience. I’ve told the kids several times, in my 30 years of being a varsity coach, I can’t tell you any year the record we had in the summer. I can tell you we made it to the final eight three times, but I can’t tell you what our record was in those years.” The offense will be a strength next spring, headlined by middle of the order hitters Carli and Michael Ashe. Tim Marks, a three-year varsity contributor, batted leadoff against Benet and was followed by Kyle Zygadto. Cooke also had a strong summer at the plate. The pitching staff has a few more questions with the loss of Brian Ashe and Dylan Brambora to graduation. Fabian Garcia will see a lot of innings, as will Zygadto and Robbie McGimpsey. Next spring, which will be Riley’s 17th at Glenbard South, also will be his last. He spent the previous 13 years as a head coach in Rockford and has engineered a lot of success during his coaching career. He will look to keep it up in his swan song. “We are usually good for 20plus wins per year,” Riley said, “and usually have a pretty good shot at getting a good seed and winning a regional title.”
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GLEN ELLYN – In its summer league playoff game July 13, the Glenbard South baseball team showed hitting shouldn’t be an issue come next year. But some shoddy fielding early in the contest turned out to be the difference in an 11-6 loss against Benet. “That’s been our M.O. this summer,” Glenbard South coach Mike Riley said. “We struggled to find the right infield combination. But we know what we have to do. We are just inexperienced in a few positions. “We were pretty fortunate to be strong up the middle last spring, with [Andrew] Wrona at shortstop, Brian Ashe at second, Kyle Carli at catcher and Alex McGimpsey in center. We have to work to get that strong again up the middle.” The Redwings also knocked the Raiders out of the postseason in the spring. This time around, Glenbard South faced an early 6-0 deficit before scoring four runs in the second inning, highlighted by a two-run home run from Sean Cooke. “We have to find a way to beat these guys,” Riley said. “They are in our sectional. Nazareth moved up to 4A, so looking at the sectional we have to get through these guys. They swung the bats really well and they made the routine plays.” Glenbard South wrapped up the summer with a 12-103 mark, though the Raiders started off by going 8-0-2 over the first 10 games. “That’s when we started falling apart defensively,” the coach said. “The first week and a half, we were fielding everyErica Benson - ebenson@shawmedia.com thing. Our pitchers are not goMike Paprota delivers a pitch for Glenbard South on June 30 in a game against Hinsdale South. Paprota ing to strike a lot of guys out so we have to make the plays. But could be part of a pitching staff in flux heading into the 2016 spring season.
“We struggled to find the right infield combination. But we know what we have to do. We are just inexperienced in a few positions.”
CD • Thursday, July 16, 2015 • mysuburbanlife.com • Suburban Life
Glenbard South using summer games to fix mistakes, prepare for next season
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