Freshman Case Christensen pitches Gardner-South Wilmington past Woodland/Flanagan-Cornell in regional opener

GARDNER – Six hundred and twenty-eight Illinois high school baseball teams will open their postseasons over the next week and a half, per the IHSA.

Not many of those 628 statewide will be handing the ball to a freshman to be their ballclub’s regional-opening starting pitcher, but Gardner-South Wilmington‘s decision to send ninth-grader Case Christensen to the bump Monday against Woodland/Flanagan-Cornell couldn’t have worked out better.

In a 6-1 victory, Case Christensen notched a seven-inning, complete-game victory, allowing one earned run on four hits and one walk while striking out a pair to send the Panthers into Wednesday’s Class 1A Dwight Regional semifinal against the host Trojans.

“It was just another day,” Case Christensen said when asked if he had nerves throughout the school day about starting his first high school regional game on the bump. “Being a freshman and starting, I guess it’s crazy in some aspects ... and the pressure was on, but I think we played well as a team and can go far.

“Between the defense playing well and then coming back in and swinging the bats to keep getting insurance runs, it felt good to just go out there and keep throwing strikes.”

Gardner-South Wilmington (10-17) heads the nine or so miles down Old Route 66 to face top-seeded Dwight (24-11) with its entire pitching staff – save Case Christensen – available thanks to the freshman right-hander’s work Monday.

“That was big for Case to eat up those innings,” GSW coach Allan Wills said. “His pitch count was down, we made some plays for him, and there weren’t many at-bats where he got down in the count.

“So, yeah, he did an awesome job, a great job, especially being a freshman on the mound. He stepped up for us, and now we can go in and battle with Dwight [on] Wednesday, and we’ve got just about everybody to throw at them.”

Woodland/Flanagan-Cornell (2-19) also received good pitching from junior starter Nolan Price (4⅓ IP, 6 R, 3 ER, 6 H, 3 BB, 6 K) and relievers Connor Dodge (⅔ IP, 0 R, 2 H, 0 BB, 0 K) and Brayden Matsko (1 IP, 0 R, 0 H, 0 BB, 1 K). The Warriors also had a trio of good scoring opportunities – bases loaded in the third, two in scoring position in the fourth and the bags loaded again in the seventh – but managed just one run against Case Christensen in all those chances, that coming on a Noah Lopez RBI groundout.

“Nolan, I thought, pitched a really good game today,” WFC coach Dan Essman said. “We made a few errors, those hurt us a little bit, and we had a few opportunities to score but just never came through. Kind of our M.O. this whole year. But hopefully we can improve on that and get back at it next year.

“Kudos to [Gardner-South Wilmington. They hit the ball, and their pitcher did really well.”

The Panthers didn’t exactly tear things up offensively, but were able to consistently get runners aboard via their eight hits and WFC’s three fielding errors to put the Warriors in high-pressure situations inning after inning.

GSW scored two in the first (Cameron Gray RBI triple, Cole Hampson RBI groundout), one in the second (Ryan Millette doubling and scoring on a delayed double steal), two in the fourth (Case Christensen bases-loaded walk, Gray scoring on a first-and-third rundown) and one final insurance tally in the fifth (pinch hitter Tysen Sorensen RBI single).

“Nothing huge,” Wills said, “but we just kept getting good at-bats, got [Price’s] pitch count up and were able to keep chipping away and adding on.”

Gray and Caden Christensen each had two hits, with Gray and Reed Millette each scoring two runs in the victory.

Price, Dodge, Matsko and Sam Schmitz had the hits for WFC.