After losing just once during the regular season, a promising spring campaign Glencoe-Silver Lake baseball team came to a sudden end with back-to-back losses to open the Section 5AA playoffs last week.
The Panthers entered the subsectional bracket with a 19-1 record and the No. 2 ranking in Class AA. They were also riding a 12-game winning streak that included five wins of 10 runs or more.
However, after earning a first-round bye, top-seeded GSL faced a team that it beat by just one run in the regular season – fifth-seeded Norwood Young America – in its playoff opener at Irish Stadium in Maple Lake on Tuesday, May 31.
Peyton Sell took the mound for the Panthers and pitched well. However, GSL and its neighboring rival remained scoreless through 4-1/2 innings until the Panthers got on the board in the bottom of the fifth when Alex Troska drove home Mitchell Kettner.
The narrow 1-0 edge did not last as NYA answered with one earned run and two unearned tallies in the top of the sixth to take a 3-1 lead on the Panthers. That advantage did hold through GSL’s final two at bats as the two-run defeat dropped the Panthers into the one-loss bracket.
For more on this story, see the June 8 issue of the Chronicle
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[1] http://www.glencoenews.com/category/byline/tom-carothers
[2] http://www.glencoenews.com/category/section/sports