Holtz fires first career no-hitter

Updated: May 25, 2011 10:13PM

In his warm-up session down the left field line at the Lisle-Benedictine University Sports Complex, Aurora Christian right-hander Mitch Holtz felt good, felt loose.

Then he promptly walked Latin leadoff hitter Alex Dago on four pitches.

Not the greatest of starts.

Four innings later however, he walked off the mound after striking out the side and told his teammates, “I’ve never thrown one of ‘these’ before.”

The word he couldn’t say was no-hitter, and he naturally began his fifth inning of work by hitting Latin’s Kyle Lewis.

Holtz worked out of the inning and wrapped up his first career no-no with a strikeout of Tommy Cox, leading the Eagles to the Class 2A Lisle Sectional championship with a 14-1 win over the Romans Wednesday afternoon.

“It’s so nice — it doesn’t matter how long the game is,” Holtz said of the no-hitter. “I’m just glad we got the win and we’re moving on to the sectional championship. It’s a cool feeling.”

The junior right-hander struck out nine, walked three, hit one, uncorked one wild pitch and allowed one unearned run en route to his seventh win of the season.

Latin (10-7) scored its lone run in the fifth when Lewis scored from third on an errant throw by Eagles first baseman Austin Penn, who was trying to double off Jackson Bubala following a groundout by Dago.

Other than that, no Roman had any real chance off Holtz.

“He was throwing strikes for the most part — if he was going to throw strikes they weren’t going to (hit him),” Eagles coach Andy Zorger said. “The wildness didn’t hurt us and it might have helped him in keeping them uncomfortable in the box.”

Dago reached twice and stole a base for the Romans, and both Sam Agler and Bubula were issued free passes. No ball was hit out of the infield by the Romans, a team making its third consecutive sectional appearance.

“He had great pop on his fastball and he set that up nice with that offspeed stuff,” Latin coach Jay Tebbens said of Holtz. “He found his spots and kept us off balance.”

Offensively, the Eagles (29-6) piled on the runs thanks to six Roman errors in the second, third and fourth innings. Of Aurora Christian’s 14 runs, eight were earned.

“We just compounded one error on top of another and it was a little difficult to come back from,” Tebbens said of his team’s defense. “They’re a good hitting team. They put the ball in play and ran the bases well and forced us to make some plays and unfortunately, we just didn’t get it done.”

All nine hitters in the lineup reached base for the Eagles in some fashion. Jake Hanson went 2-for-4 with four RBI and Bobby Kuntzendorf went 2-for-2 with three RBI and three runs scored. Nick Chamberlain went 1-for-1 with two RBI and three runs scored.

Latin starter Tommy Cox allowed seven hits and nine runs (four earned) in three innings.

“I tried to find some stuff out but we didn’t know much about them,” Kuntzendorf said. “We came in with the mindset that ‘Hey, they’re going to be good, throw strikes and field the ball.’ We came out and treated them like a good team out there.”

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