Baseball: West Aurora's Slide Continues

AURORA – West Aurora’s baseball team has been in a funk lately, and though the Blackhawks fell to Naperville Central again Wednesday, perhaps some signs appeared that they may get going offensively soon.

Central’s 10-2 win completed a three-game sweep of West in the DuPage Valley Conference opening series of the season. But West (3-6 overall, 0-3 DVC) had more offensive chances than the rest of the week, though clutch hits were still in demand.

West fell behind 4-0 going into the bottom of the third, but in the final five innings, the Blackhawks threatened every inning. They left 10 total men on base in that time, including the bases loaded in the sixth, unable to get a clutch hit to start changing the feeling around the team. The loss was the team’s sixth straight overall.

“It seems like every game we get really close and we just can’t get the final hit or the last out to stop the bleeding,” said West Aurora’s Alex Pope, who went 2-for-4 with a double and a run scored in the loss. “We’re all frustrated, but all we can do is go back to practice tomorrow and see how it goes from there. I think everybody just needs to get the confidence back up.”

West starter Austin Wyeth (1-1) mowed down the first five Naperville Central batters for before running into trouble. He allowed two runs after two were out in the second, allowed two more in the third and allowed four in the fourth. A two-run home run by Jake DeVoy chased him from the game and gave the Redhawks (8-4, 3-0) an 8-0 lead.

“Austin did a good job in the early going, but in the second inning, it kind of exploded,” West coach John Reeves said. “Not much you can say. It’s not like they’re going out there and trying to do that. It just seems like right now, everything that you can have go wrong, it kind of snowballs. A lot of it is psychological. What we need to do is find a way to stop it and restart. We just need to get going again.”

West Aurora heads to Batavia for a non-conference doubleheader Sunday before opening a three-game set against Naperville North Monday as the Blackhawks get back into DVC play.

The challenge is to get the feeling of this season’s 3-0 start back and put the current six-game skid in the rear-view mirror.

“We played well early in the season,” Reeves said. “When things go bad, how do you respond and bounce back from that? That’s where we’re at mentally right now.”