ROCHELLE — The Hubs varsity baseball team may have dropped its series-finale against Sterling on Thursday, but the Rochelle boys still managed to achieve something that hasn’t been done at Rochelle Township High School in 12 years.

After winning over the Golden Warriors on Monday and Tuesday, the Hubs clinched shared rights to the Northern Illinois Big 12 West Championship. While Sterling squashed Rochelle’s chances at an outright title with a 5-2 win over the Hubs on Thursday, Rochelle walked away with rights to its first conference championship since 2006.

“I’m really proud of all these guys and I think it means a lot that we won every conference series,” head coach Jarrod Reynolds said. “It’s a big deal to win a conference championship and the credit goes to the kids. They’re a talented group and they played really well this week. I’m happy for them.”

Sterling jumped ahead 2-0 with two runs in the top of the first inning before Rochelle earned one run back in the bottom frame. Junior Brandon Johnson and senior Johnny Kisner singled before junior Johnny Beck reached on a hit-by-pitch. Junior Hayden Jones slapped an RBI double to make it a 2-1 game.

“We swung the bats extremely well over the first two games of this series and I think another thing that’s extremely positive is that our pitchers threw well,” Reynolds said. “If you pitch well that takes cares of a lot of other things. We had four guys pitch in this series and I think all four of them did a pretty good job.”

Senior Riley Lodico reached base on a hit-by-pitch and scored in the bottom of the second inning to tie the game at 2-2. Four Rochelle batters were hit over the first two innings of the game. Both teams remained scoreless until the Golden Warriors took a 3-2 lead in the top of the fifth inning.

Sterling plated two runners in the top of the sixth inning to gain a three-run lead over the Hubs, and Rochelle was unable to tie the game in the bottom of the seventh inning despite putting two runners on base. The Hubs are now 11-7 overall and 9-3 in the NIB-12 West, and Rochelle will wrap up its regular season with two games against Plano this weekend and Senior Night against Dixon on Tuesday.

Rochelle received the No. 7 seed in the IHSA Class 3A Regional at Rock Falls. The Hubs will face No. 9 seed Sandwich in the quarterfinal round at Rochelle on Monday, May 21 at 4:30 p.m. The winner will play No. 2 seed Sterling in the semifinals on Wednesday, May 23 at 4:30 p.m.

“We need to work on some things with our defense and we need to work on making routine plays on ground balls,” Reynolds said. “I think that we’ll be in pretty good shape if we can make routine plays.”