Baseball: Wilson brothers find their niche at Elgin Academy

If fraternal twins Ian and Andrew Wilson attended a public high school, they might be playing this spring alongside former travel ball teammates at Jacobs, one of the top-ranked Class 4A baseball teams in the state.

Instead, the Algonquin natives are excited to be blazing a new trail at Elgin Academy, a 177-year-old private school that revived its Class 1A baseball program two years ago at the request of the Wilsons and several others.

Brian and Donna Wilson's sons originally attended Summit Academy until it was absorbed by Elgin Academy when the boys were third graders in 2006.

The Wilsons grew up playing baseball for the Algonquin Hawks and the Lake in the Hills Eagles and later played travel ball with Jacobs players like Jacob Sonnefeldt and Nebraska-bound Mike Addante and Dundee-Crown's Taylor Schmidt.

However, high school baseball didn't look like it was going to be an option. Elgin Academy discontinued its baseball program in 2007 due to lack of participation.

"A lot of guys in my grade played and we wondered why Elgin Academy didn't have a team because we used to have one," Ian Wilson said. "We wanted to have one again."

Thus, the preschool-through-12 institution brought baseball back as a middle school program in 2012, when the Wilsons were in seventh grade.

Steve Shapiro, whose daughter attends Elgin Academy, agreed to coach the team. Shapiro is a Barrington graduate who played for hall-of-fame coach Kirby Smith and later played at St. Louis University.

After two seasons at the middle school level, Elgin Academy returned to IHSA competition in 2014. Though the core players were talented for their age group, they were simply overmatched by stronger, more experienced upperclassmen. The Hilltoppers finished 4-16 in 2014. Last season they improved to 11-16.

"Going through some hard seasons really teaches you a lot," Andrew Wilson said. "It taught this team how to fight, how to stick together and, most importantly, to understand that we're family on and off the field."

Elgin Academy is finding success with the Wilsons and other core juniors like Jonathan Cruz now on the same footing from a physical standpoint as the teams they face. Despite dropping a doubleheader to Chicago U-High on Tuesday, the Hilltoppers own a 13-4 record.

"Their skill set has finally met what we're teaching," said Shapiro, whose staff includes assistant coaches Eric Lowe and Vincent Harris. "From that standpoint we're real happy with the direction they're going. They're very passionate toward the game. In the same breath they're maintaining fantastic GPAs. We couldn't be happier with where it's going."

The Wilson twins are enjoying excellent seasons. Andrew, mostly recovered from right labrum surgery performed last fall, leads the team with a .479 batting average (23-for-48) and has 7 doubles, 2 triples, a home run and 20 RBI. His eye-popping batting line of .479/.544/.771 translates to a 1.315 OPS (on-base plus slugging).

Ian is hitting .352 (19-for-54) with 5 doubles, 3 triples, 3 home runs and 19 RBI. He gets on base at a .471 clip and slugs .722 for an OPS of 1.193.

Ian and Andrew are hardly a two-man team.

Cruz is batting .475 (28-of-59) with 8 doubles, 5 triples and 15 RBI, Karl Rauschenberger is hitting .435 (27-of-62) with 15 RBI and freshman Kevin Kuykendall hits .422 (19-of-45) with 14 RBI.

Cruz (2-0) is the staff ace with a 1.42 ERA. In 19 innings over 5 starts, the right-hander has limited opponents to 10 hits and 15 walks while striking out 30.

The Hilltoppers have notched plenty of firsts this spring, including their first win over the Latin School of Chicago, a team they had trouble competing with the previous two seasons.

"It's especially rewarding to see us coming out on top," Ian said. "We definitely got beat our fair share of times, but we took it in stride, worked hard and got back out there."

Do the Wilsons ever wonder what might have been had they gone the public school route and played for Jacobs, which finished third in Class 4A in 2015?

"That would be a good time, but I can't imagine playing anywhere else," Andrew said. "I couldn't imagine better coaches and better teammates than at Elgin Academy now. I go here for academics - everyone goes here for academics; no one goes to Elgin Academy saying I want to go there just to play sports - but now I think we could attract some people. We're building a great team with great coaches. Who wouldn't want to play for them?"

Dundee-Crown rising: Jacobs has 15 players back from a team that finished third in Class 4A in 2015, but District 300 rival Dundee-Crown has risen to the top of the Valley Division of the Fox Valley Conference with 10 games to play.

Dundee-Crown (12-5, 7-0) defeated Crystal Lake South (13-3, 4-3) last Saturday to win its fifth straight and sweep the 2-game FVC Valley series.

Meanwhile, Jacobs (13-5. 5-2) dropped 2 games last weekend to Huntley (13-7, 5-3). The race has been on hold since due to weather complications.

"Anytime you can get on your side of the conference and start beating some teams and winning some games, it's going to help in the overall scheme of things," D-C coach Jon Anderson said. "This is a very tough conference. It's going to be a very tough race and every win we can get is going to help us."

Anderson, who starred at Barrington under legendary coach Kirby Smith, played shortstop at Illinois and spent three seasons in the Boston Red Sox organization, has a bona fide ace in Memphis-bound left-hander Danny Denz. The senior is 5-1 with a 1.47 ERA. In 33⅓ innings, he has walked 14 while striking out 66.

The Chargers finished 20-13 overall last season, 10-7 in league play. They pushed Jacobs to 12 innings in a regional game before losing on an unearned run. The fact that the Golden Eagles went on to make the state finals only emboldened D-C's returnees.

"I told these guys in our fall workouts and our winter workouts that teams are going to come after us, ready to compete," Denz said. "Last year we were pretty successful. I told these guys to come out and do the same things and they're following what I said. They're playing the way coach Anderson wants them to play and they're battling. We have so much talent on this team. We can make it somewhere, I feel."

The Chargers hope to make it to the top of the FVC Valley for the first time in nine years. They haven't won a title since 2006-07 nor have they finished higher than third.

Anderson believes his unselfish team has a chance to compete for the league crown if its team-first attitude holds up.

"We just have a good group of guys who have come together and figured out 'Hey, this is my role, this is what I can do and this is what I can excel at,'" he said. "When you get a team to jell like that and everybody supports each other, it's really going to make a big difference."