Ryan Eiermann acknowledged the emotion right away.
It sure felt great to be back to his old self.
With five strong innings, Eiermann set the tone for Naperville Central’s 9-1 DuPage Valley Conference victory over visiting Waubonsie Valley on Saturday.
“It felt good, but I knew that I had the guys behind me,” Eiermann said. “I wasn’t throwing as hard as I normally do. But I knew that with them behind me, they were going to make plays, and we were going to get outs.”
The Texas Christian-bound left-hander fanned eight while scattering five hits in posting his first win of the season.
With memories still vivid of his last start — a 9-0 loss to Neuqua Valley on April 14 — Eiermann took momentum from Thursday and ran with it.
Two days after striking out six of the seven Wildcats he faced in two innings of relief, he struck out two Waubonsie batters in each of the first two innings.
“I’d say his best start so far,” Redhawks senior catcher Jack Hughes said. “He was hitting my glove. The biggest thing for him is he started to throw his curveball for a strike. And now we have a balance of pitches. It really works well for us.”
A six-run first for the Redhawks (11-6, 7-5) was spurred by two errors from Waubonsie Valley (9-8, 5-7) that allowed 10 batters to come to the plate.
Kyle Bennington and Aaron Szczepanski both had two hits for the game as the Redhawks took advantage of three Waubonsie errors.
Eiermann took care of the rest while getting back in the right frame of mind.
A fifth-inning RBI single by Alex Schram was one of Eiermann’s few mistakes among 86 pitches.
“I know that the Neuqua game kind of screwed me up,” Eiermann said. “That was just weird to get hit around like that, but I just stayed true to myself and knew that Neuqua got the best of me and that I still had what I used to have. Just came out here firing and hoped for the best.”
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Szczepanski, who had a bloop single in the sixth to knock home the game’s final run, turned in the defensive gem of the day.
After a one-out walk to Drew Gray in the fourth, Jacob Vandrie lined a ball toward right field.
Szczepanski, playing first, snagged the liner and tagged the bag for the double play to end the inning.
“It felt great to play,” Szczepanski said. “I just love when we got Ryan on the mound, who’s getting us the ball or making plays. And when our team makes plays, we get better at-bats, and the confidence just is a boost. A big boost for us.”
Gray lasted just two innings for the Warriors and didn’t get much help from his defense.
All seven runs he gave up were unearned.
“Offensively right now, we’re just struggling, and our defense didn’t really help us stay in that baseball game,” Waubonsie Valley coach Bryan Acevedo said.
Blake Baumgartner is a freelance writer for the Naperville Sun.