North Shore Roundup: Baseball Heads to Playoffs with High Expectations

Girls Track: The path to the state championships was anything but easy for North Shore’s Annie Roge and Rachel Mabie. The pair fought off less-than-ideal weather conditions, illness and pressure situations to secure a state championship bid at last week’s sectional championship.

Mabie, a junior who holds the North Shore school record in the high jump, was expected to advance.

“She was the top seed, but weather kind of equalizes things,” North Shore coach Patrick McHugh said.

The three jumpers left with the bar at 4-10 all missed their first two attempts. Only two would qualify for the state championships. After one competitor missed and one cleared the bar, Mabie was left with a win-or-go-home attempt. Mabie had missed one attempt at 4-6, meaning she would lose out on the tiebreaker. But Mabie cleared the bar, took first overall, and advanced to her first state championships.

Despite battling a cold after overextending herself at the conference meet, junior Annie Roge broke her own school record in the 3200 (11:58) and took second place.

At the state championships, runners in the 3200 automatically advance to Saturday’s finals rather than competing in preliminaries held for most other events on Thursday. Roge becomes North Shore’s first girl track athlete to make it to Saturday.

“I think she can run faster and compete for a medal at the state meet,” McHugh said.

Baseball: North Shore wrapped up its regular season and won the ISL championship for the second straight year. Led By hitting stars Jake Gordon and Michael Jaharis, the Raiders crushed Morgan Park Academy, 12-2.

No. 1 seed North Shore will face off against Morgan Park on Wednesday in the semi-finals of the IHSA Class 1A Morgan Park Regional.

“It’s a really good opportunity for the team,” coach Martin Freeman said. “We have a shot to make some noise in the tournament.”

Even with the No. 1 seed, Freeman is still trying to prepare his team to battle. Sometimes, he says, North Shore has a tendency to letdown and play to the level of its competition. Against a struggling Francis Parker team, North Shore won 9-8 and 12-10 in a recent doubleheader.

“I’ve been talking to the guys about finishing innings and finishing games,” Freeman said. “We’ve been focusing on completing at bats and putting teams away when you have an opportunity to.”

Girls Soccer: North Shore won its third consecutvie regional championship with a 1-0 victory over St. Scholastica Academy at home on Tuesday. Ilhana Redzovic scored the lone goal for North Shore.

"We were familiar with them and I knew that based on our last couple of weeks of competition we had gotten a little better," Coach Matt Gasparotto said. "If we played to our ability we would be successful tonight and that’s what the girls did." 

The Raiders will face F.W. Parker on Friday in the sectional semi-finals. North Shore lost to F.W. Parker in last year’s sectional semi-finals, 2-1.