Benilde-St. Margaret's Mikey McGill belted a fastball to deep right field and over the fence, and if the bleachers hadn’t been there the ball may have crawled its way onto the football field.

McGill’s solo home run in the bottom of the fifth inning put the finishing touches on a 4-2 win against section and North Suburban Conference foe St. Louis Park at Benilde-St. Margaret’s High School on Wednesday night, avenging a loss last week that snapped the No. 12-ranked Red Knights’ 12-game win streak.

“It felt pretty good," McGill said. "I was slumping earlier this week, so it’s good to finally break open and get going for section playoffs.

“That was the first one of the year for me, I forgot kinda what it felt like to hit a home run.”


Benilde-St. Margaret's Michael McGill is congraulated by his team after his solo home run in the bottom of the fifth inning of a 4-2 win over St. Louis Park. Photo by Rick Orndorf

Benilde-St. Margaret's three-game skid last week leaves the conference title in easy grasp of Totino-Grace, which will face the St. Louis Park in a doubleheader Thursday. With one title out of reach, the Red Knights are looking forward to the playoffs and making a run for the Section 6, Clas 3A title and a second trip to state for the school’s baseball team. The Red Knights' lone tournament appearance in 2005 led to a third-place finish.

“We have quite a few section wins,” Benilde-St. Margaret's coach Greg Hoemke said. “I would assume we’re gonna get a top-four seed and get a bye if we go get that win (against Cooper).”

Mental errors were made by both teams, with McGill’s homer being the only earned run. Base running especially has been a point of focus for the Red Knights after their loss to St. Louis Park the first time around.

After McGill’s homer, Joey Jaramillo fielded a ground ball and faked a throw to first, tagging out Chris Racchini en route to third.

“That’s been a problem for us this year -- poor base running -- and then we made some base running mistakes today,” Hoemke said. “Though we spent a lot of time trying to work on that particular skill we still are kind of struggling with that.”

In the top of the third, Oriole’s pitcher Jake Lukasavage hit a ground ball to shortstop Keaton Studsrud who fumbled the ball and delivered a wild throw past McGill at first. That advanced Jaramillo and Joe Burnley home for St. Louis Park's only two runs.

“If we can rid some of the dumb mistakes, we’re playing pretty sound baseball," Hoemke said. "The only thing we did poorly today is Keaton had a bad inning and made a couple errors to give them their two runs. Otherwise we played an almost perfect game."

Red Knights pitcher Michael Kaminski didn’t allow an earned run. Kaminski’s pitch variety kept the Orioles off balance. He did not issue a walk.

“Kaminski has been solid, that’s really been why we’ve been winning this year," Hoemke said. "Our pitching has been really consistent, and we’ve been throwing a lot of strikes."

Kaminski struck out Andrew Henstien for his fourth strikeout in the top of the seventh and made quick work of the rest of the lineup, throwing nine pitches (all strikes) to wrap up the final inning.

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