A6
Friday, June 7, 2013
SPORTS
The Fayette County Record
With La Grange fans going nuts behind him, Kolby Kolek crosses home plate just ahead of the throw to conclude an inside-the-park grand slam that put the Leps up 5-1 in Wednesday’s game. Photo by Jeff Wick
Leps Roar Into State Title Game
La Grange Downs Silsbee 8-3 to Set Up Battle Against Defending Champs By JEFF WICK
The Fayette County Record
AUSTIN – With a little help from some pickle juice and what might have been the first insidethe-park grand slam in state baseball tournament history, the La Grange Leps are one win away from a state title. Thanks to a complete game gem by Trey Supak, that grand slam by Kolby Kolek and another homer by Chris Raborn, La Grange beat Silsbee 8-3 Wednesday at UT’s Disch-Falk field to vault the Leps into Thursday night’s 6:30 p.m. Class 3A title game against defending champ Texarkana Pleasant Grove (28-13). “They say this is a Cinderella team, but this is just a bunch of guys who like to play baseball,” said La Grange head coach Brad Harbers, who is retiring from coaching one way or another after Thursday’s game. “We’ve shown throughout the course of the season, throughout the course of the playoffs, that when the situation arises somebody is going to step up.” Wednesday it wasn’t just somebody that stepped up for the Leps – it was everybody. Every member of the starting lineup reached base for La Grange (25-9), which never trailed in this one. Supak pitched a complete game four-hitter with eight strikeouts as he dominated a Silsbee team that had six players in their lineup hitting over .300. And Supak did it all just four days after a blister on his pitching hand forced him off the mound late in the regional final win over Sinton. But Supak said the blister didn’t bother him a bit Wednesday. The secret treatment? Pickle juice. “We asked everyone around what the best solution was for healing blisters and they said soak it in pickle juice,” Supak said. “So four or five times a day we’d get the pickle juice out and I’d sit there and watch TV with my hand in pickle juice. It worked.” “Anybody who has a blister, use pickle juice,” laughed Harbers. And while Supak was mow-
Somewhere under this pile of well-wishers is Kolby Kolek after he hit his inside-the-park grand slam Wednesday.
ing the Tigers down, his teammates were doing their part to give him a big lead. La Grange drew first blood in the top of the first when Dustin Drab hustled his way onto base after a third strike got away from the catcher. Drab stole
second, advanced to third on a throwing error and then sprinted home when teammate Logan Vinklarek singled and intentionally got into a run-down between first and second. Silsbee (32-9) got that run back in their half of the inning
La Grange’s Trey Supak threw a complete game four-hitter with eight strikeouts Wednesday. Photo by Tom Wood
fueled by three Supak walks in that frame. But Supak settled down after that, and then the Lep bats gave him even more room to relax. In the third inning the Leps loaded the bases on a single by Drab and walks to Supak and
Photo by Tom Wood
Vinklarek from Silsbee starter Tyler Powell (who had only lost once all year before Wednesday). Then, with two outs, Kolek strode to the plate and launched a screamer to centerfield. The Silsbee outfielder took a bad angle to the ball. It soared
Lep shortstop Tanner Fritsch does his best to distract this Silsbee baserunner at second. Photo by Jeff Wick
over his head and he fell down as he raced to corral it. Meanwhile, Kolek was chugging around the bases as the crowd was going wild. He made it home just before the throw to the plate. It was the two most exciting plays in baseball, the inside-thepark home run and the grand slam, combined into one unforgettable state tournament moment for Leps fans. “Coach said it’s never been done here before,” Kolek said. “I knew I had hit it hard, but I thought he was going to catch it. Then I heard the crowd cheering, and I knew I really needed to turn on the jets. “By the time I got around second I was thinking, ‘This is a long run,’ but then I saw Coach Harbers and he was still waving me on. I put my head down and tried to finish. By the time I got to home plate I was tired.” That four-run cushion made all the difference, Supak said. “It’s a huge weight off your shoulders when you have that run support and you know you can make a few mistakes,” Supak said. Silsbee trimmed the La Grange lead to 5-3 in the bottom of the fourth, aided by a La Grange error – one of three the Leps made Wednesday. But La Grange upped their lead back to five runs with a three-run sixth inning. Raborn started that frame with a solo homer that landed in the bullpen beyond the left field wall. It was his second homer of the postseason for a player that didn’t get a hit of any sort during the regular season. “He left that pitch up in the zone a little bit. I was able to turn on it and get it up in the wind a little bit, and it just went,” said Raborn. “It’s quite exciting. To be able to give us a boost like that to finish out the game was really great.” La Grange got two more in that frame when freshman second baseman Austin Colon walked and then came home on a Tanner Fritsch triple. Then Fritsch came home on a single by Drab. Supak retired the Tigers over See Leps, next page