Lake in the Hills Youth Athletic Association

The LITH Thunder went undefeated in winning the Grayslake Travel Tournament over the weekend of May 17-20.

The Thunder won their pool by defeating the Highland Park Giants 11-0 in 5 innings behind a brilliant pitching performance by Jeff Heinrich, who struck out 8 of 9 batters faced. Brad Model came in in relief and threw 2 dominant innings to hold the shut out and seal victory.

The second pool game was a 13-1 victory over the Grayslake North Knights in 4 innings. Joe Rizzo, Matt Schneider and Alec Coss dominated the Knights batters while the offense was lead by Eric Helm, who was 3-3 with 4 RBI and Sean Beese, who was 3-3 with 2 doubles and 2 RBI. Jeff Heinrich also added to the slugfest, going 2-3 with a triple.

The last pool game saw the Thunder defeat the Lake County Stars 8-1. Thunder pitchers Tom Laurie and Zach Johnson combined to allow 3 hits and only 1 earned run. The offense was lead by Jeff Heinrich, who was 2-3 with 3 RBI and hit a monster home run in the Thunder half of the first inning that cleared the 350 fence with 10' to spare. This was Heinrich's second home run of the season. The Thunder added more runs to their first inning tally of 3 to cruise to victory over the Stars.

The championship game was played at Grayslake Central H.S. on their varsity field. It is a beautiful facility and gave the championship game an added feeling of importance. The Thunder set the tone in the top of the 1st when Eric Helm, Alec Coss and Joe Rizzo combined on apectacular relay play that saw Coss throwing a laser beam strike to Rizzo at the plate to gun down Grayslake Central Ram Ben Fitzgerald at the plate, ending the Grayslake first inning rally. This sparked an offensive explosion by the Thunder, who sent 14 batters to the plate in the bottom of the first inning, and saw every player in the lineup score in their half of the frame. After 1 inning, the Thunder were up 10-0. Thunder starter Jack Schneider then took the reigns and shut down the Rams offense. The Thunder crusied to a 14-1 victory to win the tournament. There were numerous offensive stars in the championship game, including:Joe Rizzo: 2-3 with a double and an RBI, Zach Johnson 1-3 with a double and 2 RBI, Matt Curtin 2-2 with 2 RBI, Matt Schneider 2-2 with an RBI. However, the biggest star was Danny Rochotte's monster 3-run home run that traveled well over 375', easily clearing the fence in left-center field, driving in 3 runs and finishing the scoring for the Thunder.

Congratulations to the Thunder on a very well-played tournament!