On March 24, New Trier baseball fell to Loyola Academy 12-1 in their home opener at Duke Childs Field. The game ended in five innings after the Ramblers blew the brakes off the Trevs defense, earning them a slaughter rule win.
Despite the blowout loss, the Trevs still opened their season with two huge wins on their St. Louis trip days earlier. In their first game on March 20, they took down the No. 3 ranked team in Kentucky, McCracken County High School, 5-4 on a walk-off from freshman catcher Chase Estrada. In addition to his game-sealing hit, Estrada recorded three RBIs in his first varsity performance. The next day the Trevs came back out led by starting pitcher and senior captain Nick Bailey, defeating the No. 12 team in Illinois, Edwardsville High School 7-3.
Pitching 5.2 innings against Edwardsville, Bailey tallied 12 strikeouts while only letting up only one hit–a performance that merited Illinois Prep Baseball’s Pitcher of the Week award.
“He was lights out this weekend,” head coach Dusty Napoleon said. “When he’s on, he’s our ace. He’s done a great job leading, and he was just exceptional on Saturday against Edwardsville.”
But with senior starting pitcher senior Greg Campitelli and Bailey being the only healthy starting arms on the roster, the team had to cycle through the bullpen against the Ramblers.
With this shortage of starters, the coaching staff aims to flesh out the roles of the pitching staff in the coming weeks.
“We need to get guys healthy,” Napoleon said. “We have a couple important arms who are still a little hurt. But we are going to give guys opportunities and kind of see what role they have, whether it’s to start or whether it’s coming out of the bullpen.”
The team also wants to focus on keeping their mentality and play steady after a tough loss to the Ramblers.
“We started off the season 2-0, two great wins, and we were riding that high,” senior shortstop Will Blomeier said. “[Today], we got caught up in this Loyola versus New Trier rivalry, and we just have to flush it. It’s early in the season and we’re better than that.”
Senior left-handed pitcher James Berman reiterated a similar sentiment.
“If you’re going through a 35 or 40-game season, you can’t expect to win every game,” Berman said. “You have to know how to lose. You have to know how to come back from a loss, and sometimes you just have to learn how to get punched in the face.”
The Trevs now head down to Scottsdale, Arizona for their annual spring break trip from March 27-31, and follow it up with the start of conference play the following week.
“As we go to Arizona this weekend, we really want to give guys a lot of opportunities,” Napoleon said. “I want to give guys opportunities and see what they can do, and then as we work closer to the conference, making sure that we have guys in good roles and making sure the guys can help us in a variety of different ways.”