Hit in the toe? Wild ending gives Lena-Winslow baseball first regional title since 2014

A toe got in the way of an extra-inning pitcher’s duel and lifted the area’s hottest baseball team to its first regional title in eight years.

Ethan Fye threw 9 ⅔ innings, but in the end, the Lena-Winslow pitcher's foot proved as pivotal as his arm. Fye drove in the winning run in a 3-2 11-inning win over Galena on Friday in the Class 1A Freeport Aquin Regional when he was hit in the foot by a pitch with the bases loaded. It was on a 1-2 count with one out. The game was moved up from Saturday because of forecasts for rain.

“It was crazy,” Le-Win coach Nick Werhane said. “I didn’t know how to react. You are looking around. It’s a deadball play. It took a couple of seconds to sink it. That’s it. It’s over. There’s nowhere for anyone else to go except home. It was surreal.”

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Le-Win (20-5) improved to 20-1 after an 0-4 start to the season and will now play the winner between Sterling Newman and Forreston 4:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Lena-Winslow Sectional.

Le-Win thought it was going to win in the ninth when No. 9 hitter Ayden Packard led off with a triple.

“We had the top of the order coming up and all anyone had to do is make contact and it’s over,” Werhane said. “We couldn’t do it. We didn’t get him in.”

Packard got it started again in the 11th, this time with a leadoff walk. A fielder’s choice, followed by another walk and two batters hit by a pitch ended the game in a strange way. The first hit batter, though, was familiar: Brody Mahon has now been hit by a pitch a school-record 14 times this year.

Lena-Winslow also had a pivotal first inning, scoring two runs on a single by Drew Streckwald, an RBI double by Fye and an RBI single by Jake Zeal, who also earned the win with 1 ⅓ innings of relief of Fye.

That inning was also key because Galena ace Ethan Hefel threw more than 30 innings in the frame. He wound up hitting the pitch count and leaving the game after striking out 11 in 6 ⅔ innings.

“That first inning was huge,” Werhane said. “We had all the momentum after that first inning, getting to Hefel. A couple of our guys got solid contact off of him.

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“That could have been a great start for us, but he settled in like a good, veteran senior does. He knows how to pitch. He has so many different arm angles and will change his delivery and changes speeds. He’s just a really fun pitcher to watch work.”

Fye struck out eight and allowed seven hits and one earned run before hitting the pitch count and leaving after 116 pitches with two outs in the 10th. Galena scored its runs on a sacrifice fly in the fourth and an error in the sixth.

The win also gave Le-Win its first 20-win season since 2013.

“This meant so much to me and our assistant coaches and our kids,” Werhane said. “It’s pretty special. We haven’t won since 2014. We have a good tradition of baseball teams here, but we’ve had some young teams lately. We finally had some senior leadership. Boy, did we need it. If we were young like we used to be, I don’t know if we could have pulled through. This was a huge win.”

Matt Trowbridge is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at mtrowbridge@rrstar.com and follow him on Twitter at @MattTrowbridge. Sign up for the Rockford High School newsletter at rrstar.com.