MSL Baseball: Barrington, Schaumburg Set Standard for Mid-Suburban League Baseball Success
Conant Makes Title-Game Run, Finishes Second in 2024
As Paul Groot looked ahead to Schaumburg’s 1997 trip to the state baseball tournament, he also looked back to Barrington winning the first title by a Mid-Suburban League school 11 years earlier.
Groot was in his second year as head coach in 1986 when the Saxons went from sixth place in the MSL South to a surprising postseason run and 20 wins. Not bad for a program that had only two winning seasons and a high of 14 victories before he arrived.
Schaumburg’s reward was a Class AA sectional championship matchup against Kirby Smith’s powerhouse Broncos. They were on their way to setting a state record for home runs in a season with 65 and were led on the mound and behind the plate by future American League All-Star catcher Dan Wilson.
Barrington’s 9-1 victory on its way to the biggest prize in Springfield was not surprising.
“In all honesty, we had a good team that year, but we didn’t belong on the same field with Barrington,” Groot told me a few days before the ‘97 tourney. “Barrington was the best high school team I ever saw. We were so far below them.”
But a few days later in 1997, the Saxons would join Barrington as they won the MSL’s second state title in dramatic fashion at Geneva’s Elfstrom Stadium. And no baseball team from the MSL would make it back to a championship game until Conant did so with its dramatic 1-0 semifinal win over York and projected MLB first-round pick Ryan Sloan on Friday, June 7 of 2024 in Joliet.
Conant coach Derek Fivelson would have some appreciation for what those two programs accomplished. He was a standout senior catcher at Hoffman Estates in 1997 and played with some of Schaumburg’s key players - including future pro pitchers and brothers T.J. and Mike Nall - in American Legion ball. He also played against Barrington during Smith’s illustrious career that ended with a third-place state finish in 1998.
It’s also interesting that the 2024 Cougars, who took second in 4A with a 4-1 loss to six-time champion Providence Catholic, adopted the “Refuse to Lose” mantra of the 1995 Seattle Mariners. Fivelson told the Daily Herald’s Dick Quagliano after Conant’s sectional championship that he sent his team a 12-minute video of the Mariners’ improbable comebacks to win the American League West title and AL Division Series against the Yankees.
The starting catcher for the 1995 Mariners? A 26-year-old local kid who made it big named Dan Wilson.
Here’s a look at the titles of the only two MSL programs to win or play in state championship games prior to Conant this season.
Barrington Has a Real Blast in 1986
In his 1986 Daily Herald MSL outlook, the legendary Keith Reinhard wrote that Barrington wouldn’t have to worry about out-finessing the opposition and “all the Broncos have to do is club the enemy into submission.”
There was definitely a lot of truth to that as the Broncos already had 11 homers in 6 games when Reinhard’s preview was published. Few coaches played things closer to the vest than Smith and his “we do have a pretty decent hitting team this year” would be quite an understatement - especially if you had to face them 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate.
Wilson, Keith Noreen and Mike Bradley were three of the key returnees from a 20-8 team that won the MSL North and lost the MSL title game to Rolling Meadows in 1985. They also won the state American Legion title that summer under Smith.
Expectations had been building for this group for years since several players were part of the 1979 team that reached the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The foundation for a successful high school program was in place under Joe Plaskas (179-81 record from 1968-76), but Smith took it to another level. His 1978 team went 19-0 in MSL play and two years later the Broncos reached the Elite Eight for the first time.
At the center of it all in 1986 was Wilson, who hit .451 with 9 homers and 45 RBI and went 13-0 on the mound with a 1.69 ERA and 104 strikeouts in 87 innings. The lineup was stacked with Noreen (.451, 12 HR, 37 RBI), who starred at Iowa and had a brief pro stint, shortstop Mark Levin (.442, 10 HR, 44 RBI, school-records 6 3Bs and 60 runs), Bradley (.416, 11 HR, 39 RBI), Peter Faith (.374, 9 HR, 37 RBI), James Wambach (.397, 7 HR), Jerry Willis (.358, 3 HR, 28 RBI) and sophomore Tony Mensik (.300).
Smith liked the potential of the staff led by Wilson, Noreen (7-0, 0.93), Faith (7-2) and Bob Beaubien (5-3) under the direction of Hall of Fame pitching coach Dave Engle. They certainly didn’t have to worry about offensive support as the Broncos averaged 10 runs a game. They hit 7 homers in a doubleheader in Freeport and hit 9 in back-to-back MSL wins over Conant and Fremd.
“I won’t quote a team total because it sounds unrealistic,” said Smith, who certainly knew since he had one of the most detailed school record books you’ll ever find. “People would think it’s a misprint. Maybe our field is just too small.”
But Wilson already exhibited the understanding of the game that would be instrumental in his 14-year big-league career where defense and handling pitchers were hallmarks. The Broncos didn’t just have to sit back and wait for something big to happen.
“The first thing everyone talks about are the home runs but I think we do a lot of little things that people don’t notice,” Wilson said in a Herald story by the late Tim Sassone, who became renowned for his Blackhawks coverage. “We’re always working on fundamentals in practice. He’s (Smith) very big on that and it pays off.”
Levin said Wilson wasn’t just talking about the rest of the team, either.
“People think of a guy like Dan Wilson as a power hitter, but call on him to go to right on a hit-and-run and he’ll do it,” Levin told Sassone. “That’s what’s good about this team, everyone does what he has to do to win.”
And that showed as Wilson outdueled Hoffman Estates’ hard-throwing star Stacey Olenick 4-2 in the MSL title game. Then the Broncos blasted their way past five regional and sectional opponents by a combined 55-7. Wilson, Noreen and Faith homered in the 9-1 win over Schaumburg that sent them to the Elite Eight at Springfield’s Lanphier Park.
The quarterfinal would be a huge test against Oak Forest, which had gone 70-4 over two seasons and was considered a favorite to become only the second school to repeat as a baseball state champion alongside Maine (Township) in 1958-59.
“This year is not any different from 1980,” Smith told Reinhard. “This team hasn’t proved itself beyond the sectional.”
They would in dramatic fashion as left fielder Craig Halborg’s diving catch with two runners on and two out in the seventh inning saved a 5-4 win over Oak Forest. Willis had 2 hits and 2 RBI and Noreen got the final out to save it for Wilson.
“It was a great play. It was a great game,” said Noreen, who unexpectedly passed away in late 2020, to Reinhard. “Until we actually got out here and grabbed a quick lead I wasn’t even sure we could play with them.”
The semifinals and finals got pushed back a day because of rain to Saturday so the Barrington seniors missed their graduation ceremony. But they rolled to the head of the class in MSL baseball history by beating Belleville East 6-2 in the semis and Fenger from the Chicago Public League 12-2 in 5 innings for the championship.
Noreen earned tournament MVP honors and hit the team’s 65th and final homer in the semifinals. The team record would last only a year as Bartonville Limestone, located just south of Peoria, hit 68 with a well-known power hitter in future Hall of Famer Jim Thome. Morrisonville, a small co-op program 40 minutes south of Springfield, hit 67 in 2000.
Barrington would return to Springfield in 1987 with Wilson, Bradley and Wambach as seniors and in 1988 for second-place finishes. They lost in the state quarterfinals in 1995 but Smith got a nice retirement gift in 1998 with a third-place state finish to cap a 22-year head coaching career with a 539-196 record. The Broncos made it to state one more time in 2005 under Jim Hawrysko and finished in third place.
Saxons Shoot for the Top in 1997
The short-term pain of the 1986 sectional title-game loss produced many long-term gains for the Saxons as Paul Groot and longtime assistant Tom Mueller set out to build a consistent winner similar to Barrington under Smith. Three years later they were playing for a championship in Springfield and suffered a heartbreaking 3-2 loss in 8 innings to Harrisburg.
More success followed and similar to Barrington in 1986, what happened a year earlier was a sign of things to come for Schaumburg in 1997. It reached the 1996 sectional final, still the last step to get to the Elite Eight at that time, and lost 2-0 to Rolling Meadows with future pro pitchers Rick Kirsten and Steve Gagliano.
The Saxons also came up one game short of reaching the summer league Elite Eight and a core group of their players were a win short of making the American Legion state tournament. Both of those summer events carried tremendous significance then, so the group led by Mike Nall, Schaumburg’s version of Dan Wilson on the mound and behind the plate, was hungry for more.
“That’s been the focus for all six seniors we have this year,” Nall said before the 1997 season. “We’ve got to get to state. We’ve got to get to Kane County. We agreed to put individual things aside to get to Kane County. I think we’ve got the team that can do it.”
Everyone in the lineup hit better than .300 and leadoff man Tim Chambers hit 7 homers after not clearing the fence his first two varsity seasons. Mike Nall and his sophomore brother T.J., pitcher-catcher Mark Belousek, third baseman Brian Wojtanowski, talented center fielder Paul Reuer, outfielders Kevin Gleeson and John Komacki, shortstop Josh Dryden and first baseman Mike Weel made it a versatile team that had speed and played excellent defense.
And the pitching was top-notch with the Nalls, Belousek and Weel. Mike Nall pitched at UIC and Northwestern and briefly in the pros. T.J. Nall, who is now coaching at West Chicago, was an eighth-round pick of the Dodgers after his senior year at Schaumburg and got as high as Triple-A in a 10-year pro career.
Schaumburg rolled to the MSL South title by 4 games and won its first MSL title by avenging a regular-season loss to Barrington 9-4. Chambers hit a 3-run homer and Mike Nall blasted a 2-run shot.
“They’re a great club and I have a lot of respect for Kirby and his program,” Groot said. “Year-in and year-out they’re always the team to beat.”
Schaumburg had little trouble winning its three regional games but its Kane County dreams were nearly derailed by upstart Zion-Benton in a Barrington sectional semifinal that was postponed from Saturday to Monday by rain. The Saxons scored 5 unearned runs in the top of the eighth of an 8-3 win after the Zee-Bees, who finished 18-15, led 3-0 and missed two chances to squeeze home the go-ahead run in the sixth.
“If they execute the squeeze we’re not playing,” Groot said of the sectional championship that immediately followed against Barrington.
Mike Nall got the win with 4⅓ innings of relief and then came back to start against the Broncos. He went the first 4 innings (the IHSA postseason limit at the time was 9 innings in one day) and Belousek threw 3 hitless innings for the save in an 8-1 win that sent the Saxons back to state.
“Coach Mueller said we’ve been knocking on the door … let’s break through,” Nall said.
First up at Kane County’s Elfstrom Stadium was Chicago Public League power Clemente, which was renowned under coach Rich Tomoleoni for running its opponents ragged on the basepaths, bunting and using all sorts of pickoff plays. Nall didn’t have to worry about any distractions for 6 innings in his bid for the first perfect game in state tourney history.
Nall gave up a leadoff walk to start the seventh but finished off a no-hitter and 3-0 win with a called strikeout on his 77th pitch. Actually, the only “distraction” was one of his own teammates breaking an unwritten baseball rule in the fifth inning.
“On the field I said, ‘Hey, Mike, it looks like you’ve got a no-hitter going,’” Dryden said from shortstop. “I told him I’ve got to kid you now. I’m glad he got it.”
And Dryden helped preserve it with a couple of nice plays in the fifth - including one where Weel stretched for a high throw at first.
“I told him, ‘Keep quiet, are you trying to jinx me or something,’” Nall said.
Everything was shaping up perfectly at a time when pitching depth was crucial to win three games in two days for a title. A Class AA Elite Eight-record 10-run third inning in the semifinal sent Schaumburg to an 11-0 win in 5 innings over Rock Island as Belousek threw just 63 pitches and went 3-for-3 with 2 doubles and 2 RBI. Groot came back with Belousek to start the title game against Lockport and he went the first 4 to reach his one-day limit of 9 innings and left with a 4-1 lead.
Nall took over and was three outs from a title. Lockport cut it to 4-2 in the top of the seventh when Schaumburg was a strike away from a trophy celebration with a runner on and Greg Blaesing at the plate.
Blaesing then blasted a belt-high fastball Nall called “the farthest homer I’ve ever seen in my life” off the scoreboard in left-center to tie the game.
“The kid just hit the crap out of the ball,” Belousek said. “It drained me emotionally and I was upset, but I had a feeling we’d come back. We never give up.”
Which Schaumburg didn’t as Mike Nall got out of the eighth and T.J. Nall struck out the side in the ninth. The game-winning rally started when Chambers turned a two-out, 0-2 count into a walk. Komacki’s infield single and an intentional walk to Reuer brought up the lefty-hitting Wojtanowski, who lined the first pitch into left-center for the title-winning single off Lockport ace Jeff Blaesing.
“There’s no other feeling in the world. It’s what you dream of,” Wojtanowski said.
“Our kids were focused on this from the first day of the season,” Groot said. “They knew they had a shot.”
Belousek was named tournament MVP and Komacki, Chambers and Mike Nall were all-tourney picks. Schaumburg got back to the Elite Eight one more time in 2005 with Barrington - the only time two MSL teams made it in the same year - but lost in the quarterfinals to Lockport.
Groot, who passed Smith as the winningest baseball coach in MSL history at 611-303 in 28 years, had one more dramatic run for a third state trophy in his final season before retirement in 2012. The Saxons reached the Class 4A supersectional and lost to Grant.