Boylan and Hononegah add strange new chapter to baseball rivalry; updated NIC-10 standings

Matt Trowbridge, Rockford Register Star

Has there ever been a Hononegah-Boylan baseball game like this?

“The kids asked me the same question,” Boylan coach Matt Weber said after the Titans drubbed Hononegah 20-9 Monday in a matchup of the only two teams still unbeaten in the NIC-10.

The answer is no. Maybe not even close.

“I’ve never seen 20 runs scored by either team,” Weber said. “It’s typically more of a 3-1 or 4-3, scratch-it-out and make a play game.”

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Not this one. This game was so unusual that Hononegah lost the game, in large part, in the bottom of the first — when it scored three runs to get back in the game after Boylan scored seven runs in its first at-bat.

“We had a chance to do even more damage,” Hononegah coach Matt Simpson said. We let (Boylan starter Henry Berg) off the hook. That changed the dynamics of the game as much as the seven-run top of the first.”

Here’s how strange this game was:

  • The 20 runs allowed by Hononegah (18-6, 12-1) was five more than Hono had given up in its previous dozen league games. It was more runs than Hononegah gave up in the entire 18-game conference season in 2022 when it allowed 17. It was one more than the Indians allowed in the 2021 season, when they gave up 19 runs in 18 league games. It was more than Hono had given up in its last eight games against Boylan, when it had given up 17 total runs in an eight-game win streak over the Titans.

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  • Hononegah ace Nolan Mabie gave up six runs and retired only one batter. And that one was on a sacrifice bunt.

  • Boylan’s best pitcher, staked to a 7-0 lead before he threw a pitch, then walked the first four batters he faced.

“I’m sure Coach Weber was not very happy with him not attacking the strike zone,” Simpson said.

“That’s why your inside the dugout,” Weber said. “It’s a different safety zone in there.”

Weber let Berg calm down. And after Berg allowed an RBI single, he got out of the jam with a ground-out and then a hard liner to right that turned into a double play because of a base running error.

“I didn’t get it going at first,” Berg said, “but luckily I started getting my pitches over the plate. I just tried to stay within myself and started to slow down the (velocity). I just tried to put it over the plate and let them hit it.”

Hononegah hit it OK, collecting seven hits. But Boylan (17-8, 13-0) pounded out 17 hits. The Titans also walked eight times and were hit twice by a pitch.

“Coach told us they were going to pitch outside and we should just go the other way,” said Boylan leadoff hitter Austin Alonso, who got on base all five times and had three RBIs and three runs scored. “That’s where most of our hits were.”

The two teams will meet again Wednesday at Boylan in a game that should decide the conference title. Third-place Belvidere North (10-3 NIC-10) probably fell out of the race with an 8-6 loss Monday to Freeport.

Four-time defending conference champion Hononegah doesn’t want to dwell on Monday’s debacle. But it won’t forget it, either.

“You are going to lay an egg every now and then,” Simpson said. “We did that today. But we still need to learn from the mistakes that we made.”

Boylan also wants to put this game in the past but not forget it. The better to know how to repeat it.

“This was definitely something different,” said Boylan cleanup hitter Nico Conteras, who had two hits and four RBIs. “We came out playing as a team and put up as many runs as we could.

“This win means a lot — but we should come out and do it every time.”

NIC-10 baseball standings as of May 6

School, Conf, Overall

  • Boylan, 13-0, 17-8

  • Hononegah, 12-1, 18-6

  • Belvidere North, 10-3, 12-9

  • Freeport, 8-5, 18-8

  • Harlem, 8-5, 12-10

  • Guilford, 7-6, 9-11

  • Belvidere, 5-8, 7-17-1

  • East, 2-11, 2-11

  • Jefferson, 0-13, 1-15

  • Auburn, 0-13, 0-16

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Boylan-Hononegah have unusual battle for first in NIC-10 baseball

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