OLNEY, Ill. -- The Warriors learned about 90 minutes prior to the start of Monday's game at Olney Central that they had become the new No. 1 team in the latest NJCAA Division I baseball poll.
They proceeded to put their newly minted status on public display for the first time against the Blue Knights in impressive fashion: an overwhelming 20-2 Great Rivers Athletic Conference victory.
WVC improved to 44-9 overall, and 22-2 in GRAC play, with its' 18th consecutive victory. Olney Central fell to 30-22, and 10-14 with the losses.
The Warriors scored two runs in the first inning and six more in the second, then repeated that 2-6 sequence again to pile up a 16-0 advantage through four innings. They spread 19 hits among 12 different players, the exact number that produced a total of18 runs batted in.
Catcher Daniel Contreras led the way with three hits. Mack Mitchell topped the RBI column with three.
The top of the order again showed off its' power, with leadoff hitter Richard Bonomolo, Jr., and No. 2 Nick Williams both hitting home runs. For Williams, it was No. 11 on the year, a team best.
While all that was going on, starting pitcher Mike Sokol threw 4 1/3 innings of scoreless one-hit ball before giving way to Jackson Soucie (1 2/3 innings) and Maddox Pennington (1), who gave up Olney's only other hit of the day when the Knights broke up the shutout in the bottom of the seventh.
Sokol got the win and is now 7-0 on the hill.
When you are the No. 1 team in America, there is not much you can hide, but the Warriors had been quietly building their offense into one of the top units in junior college baseball. They have the eighth highest batting average (.354) and are second in on-base percentage (.487). They are sixth in runs (524), eighth in hits (.567) and seventh in RBIs (472).
Not to be outdone, the Warrior pitching staff now has the sixth-lowest earned run average in the country (3.40).
Wabash Valley finishes the regular season this weekend with a series against Southwestern (39-11, 18-6). The opening game is on Thursday at Fournier Field in Mt. Carmel with a 2 p.m. CDT start. Then on Saturday, the regular season concludes with a 12-noon twinbill in Belleville.
Southwestern is in the hunt for home-field advantage for next weekend's Region 24 tournaments. The top two teams each host a double-elimination affair with three other teams. WVC has already clinched one of the spots, but the Blue Storm and 20th-ranked John A. Logan (36-14) are battling to be the second host.
Region 24 Division I schools consist of all 10 GRAC members plus Frontier. Wabash Valley is 25-2 in Region 24 games. John A. Logan stands 21-6, and Southwestern is 19-6.
Both Region 24 champions will then join the winners from Region 4 (northern Illinois) and Region 11 (Iowa) at the NJCAA Midwest District tournament, this year hosted by the Region 11 winner.
The champion there gains a berth in the Juco World Series in Grand Junction, Colorado.
UPDATE: Southwestern split with Lincoln Trail in a doubleheader on Tuesday. That leaves the Blue Storm with a 20-7 Region 24 record heading into the Wabash Valley series. They are now one game behind Logan in the race for the second tournament host. The loss in the first game was the sixth in GRAC play for Southwestern, which handed the outright league championship to the Warriors.