Lakers drop doubleheader to St. Francis

The Lakers baseball team tested their mettle against tough CCAC foe St. Francis in a doubleheader last Tuesday in Joliet.

Though the Lakers couldn't quite squeak out a win, they came close, losing both games by the narrow margin of 3-2. Head coach Steve Marchi said he was happy with his team's effort against the tough Saints team.

"We played lights out against the best team in the league, and we were with them the whole way. We just couldn't quite finish them off," Marchi said.

The Lakers had two freshman pitchers on the mound, Brett Hoffman and Ruben Lomeli, and both pitched complete games before ultimately earning losses. Hoffman, now 0-4 on the year, allowed just three runs on

six hits in game one, and Lomeli dropped to 1-4 on the year in game two after allowing just three runs, two earned, in six innings.

"The top of our pitching rotation is doing really well, but the bottom needs to get better at throwing strikes," Marchi said.

Mike Schultz, assistant coach and pitching coach, had high praise for both of the Lakers pitchers.

"Ruben has really made some strides since the fall, with his mechanics and his approach to getting guys out. He and Brett Hoffman both threw great games," Schultz said.

The Lakers baseball team plays their home games at Alexian Field in Schaumburg. The field, which opened in 1999, had been the home of the Schaumburg Flyers, a professional team affiliated with the North American League, not the MLB. 

However, early this year the Flyers were formally evicted by the Village of Schaumburg, which owns the field, due to nonpayment of rent on the facility, totaling over $900,000.

A new ownership group is now in place, but for Roosevelt, this meant coming into a facility which had seen little care in the past months.

"When we first saw it, the place was a mess—it was awful, completely torn up. We knew we couldn't play there right away," Marchi said.

The Lakers delayed their home games at Alexian for about two weeks, but Marchi said that improvements have since been made to bring the field back into playing condition.

"It's a shame, because it's a nice stadium, but it should be in very good shape before

too long," Marchi said.

Even so, playing at Alexian means a lot of travel time to and from games, which poses a challenge. A water main project ongoing on Congress Parkway has delayed the start of construction of the athletics field house, which will ultimately be located across from the Auditorium Building on the southeast corner of Congress and Wabash. 

"One of the biggest challenges we have is that we're so nomadic. In the fall, there were times that we had to walk our team across the street to Grant Park to practice.

There are away games that are closer than our home games," Schultz said.

"Even though it's our home field, basically it's a travel day for us on game days.

It's not totally ideal, but in the interim it's a very nice place to be," Marchi said.

As far as this year, Marchi and Schultz just want to see their team make consistent progress.

"Our goal for this year is to continue to get better, and to work every day to be a little bit better than we were yesterday," Marchi said.

"The key for the coaching staff is that we improve throughout the year and carry some momentum into next spring. We want to start showing teams in the conference that we're here, and we're going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future," Schultz said.

Marchi took it to heart when St. Francis head coach Gordie Gillespie, a Hall of Fame coach with a staggering 58-year coaching record of 1,852–938–1, made a point of congratulating him at the end of the doubleheader.

"He came up to me after the game and said, ‘You guys have a heck of a ball club.' That meant a lot to me, to have one of the greatest baseball coaches on earth telling me that we have a good club. Especially after we damn near beat him twice," Marchisaid.

"I told the team after the game, ‘You guys might not believe me, but Gordie knows what he's talking about, and if he thinks we have a good team, that means we've definitely got something here," Marchi said.