Illiana's Oppenhuis grounds Eagles

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Jocelyn Oppenhuis thinks this is the best team she's played on at Illiana Christian.

Monday she and her Illiana teammates backed up her belief as the No. 17 Vikings stunned No. 2 Sandburg 2-1 in a nonconference matchup in Lansing.

It was the third loss in the last four games for the Eagles (26-4).

Oppenhuis (18-3), a junior right-hander and three-year varsity player, fired a three-hitter and struck out 14 -- which is the most strikeouts against Sandburg this year.

"I just came out and really wanted to get this one," Oppenhuis said. "Before the game we said we could do this and we did. We're all kind of on cloud nine now and really quite proud of ourselves."

Trailing 1-0, Illiana (26-4) got on the board in the bottom of the second when senior left fielder April Houtsma did something she'd never done before -- hit a home run.

"That was my goal for my Illiana career and I got it," said Houtsma of her line drive over the left-center field fence. "It feels amazing. I was pretty mad that I let the ball [on a Laura Christensen double] go over my head in the first and I wanted to come back from that."

With two outs in the fifth, Viking senior first baseman Rachel DeBoer hit a towering drive to center field that Christensen tried to catch. But the senior center fielder tumbled over the mesh fence and the ball went even further for DeBoer's second homer of the season.

"I thought it was going to be caught, it felt like a popup," DeBoer said. "That was very exciting to get a hit like that in a game like this.

"This is pretty big, it shows us how far we can go."

The two homers doubled the total that had previously been hit off Sandburg sophomore Brittany Gardner (22-3). She surrendered four hits, while walking one and striking out 13.

Sandburg scored in first when Christensen (2-for-3) led off with a double and scored on a two-out RBI single by freshman first baseman Lexi Bryant. After that Oppenhuis, whose dad Mike Oppenhuis is the Vikings coach, only allowed an infield single in the final 6 1/3 innings.

"She is one of the best pitchers in the state and did an awesome job against us," Sandburg coach Jim Fabianski said of Oppenhuis. "We're working through some things, but it's nothing we can't handle. The energy level on this team is still high."