ROCHELLE — The Hubs varsity baseball team had to wait two extra days to open the season at home against the Harlem Huskies, but neither team walked away with a victory Monday night.
Trailing 3-0 in the bottom of the seventh inning, Rochelle rallied for three runs to tie the game before both the Hubs and the Huskies went cold in two innings of extra play, ending the game in a 3-3 draw before umpires called the contest due to lighting concerns.
“I think we started to make a little bit more contact and I think seeing a guy a third time through the order definitely helps,” head coach Jarrod Reynolds said. “The more you can see a guy, the better you can see a ball. We struggled early on which I think is to be expected in our first game but I was really proud of the way the kids fought back in that seventh inning.”

Senior Kyle Seebach started the game for Rochelle (0-0-1), tossing six innings and striking our four batters while allowing just one run. The long lefty cruised through the first inning before running into some trouble in the second after hitting one batter and walking another.
Seebach escaped the jam in the second, but he found himself in another hole in the third inning, prompting Reynolds to make a visit to the pitcher’s mound.

“I just told him to take deep breaths, relax and focus on seeing and throwing through his target,” he said. “Nothing real mechanical or deep… Kyle did a great job for us. He threw about 100 pitchers and I think he wanted to throw a little more but he threw strikes and he kept us in the game.”
Harlem took first blood from Rochelle with an RBI single to right field by Jordan Anderson in the third inning, and the Hubs were only able to muster up two hits through the first six innings off Huskie pitcher Eric Steiner.
Junior Riley Lodico entered in relief of Seebach in the top of the seventh, but the Huskies extended their lead to three runs after a couple of miscues by the Rochelle defense.
With their backs against the wall, the purple and white found a way to make Steiner work.
After sophomore Johnny Beck drew a walk and junior Noah Mershon reached base on an error, senior catcher Sam Christensen singled home pinch runner Cody Thompson for Rochelle’s first run of the game to cut the Harlem lead to 3-1 with one out in the bottom of the seventh inning.
The Hubs made it a 3-2 game after Mershon scored on an RBI groundout by senior third baseman Landon Griffith, and after a wild throw on a pickoff attempt allowed Christensen to advance from first to third base, junior second baseman Ralfy Mancinas lined a single to center to bring Christensen home and tie the game 3-3.
Lodico singled to left to put Mancinas at third base, but Harlem’s Takuma Kobayashi struck out Rochelle senior Caleb Gould to push the game into extra innings.
Lodico threw two shutout innings of relief for the Hubs, and Rochelle nearly won the game in the bottom of the ninth inning after Griffith singled to left and stole second base to enter scoring position. But Kobayashi put down both Mancinas and Lodico on strikes to end the game.
“Hopefully we can continue to pitch and play defense well,” Reynolds said about Rochelle’s upcoming game against Forreston on Saturday. “We just need to make a little bit more contact and I think we will… It’s just a matter of putting a bat on the ball and we’ll be alright.”