Posted: June 30, 2009

Oak Creek — The Oak Creek Knights were the state's top-ranked summer baseball team in the preseason. They have nine seniors scheduled to play college ball next fall. Three of them - J.T. Schneider, Bobby Widenski and Eric Semmelhack - played in the Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association All-Star Classic in Oshkosh on Friday and Saturday.

So when the Knights lost three games in a row in late June, it was understandable if coach Scott Holler, an all-star coach last weekend, had his finger on the panic button.

"Every once in a while if you run into good pitchers you might lose two in a row," Holler said. "But three in a row wasn't expected.

"This group has had so much success, when all of sudden things do go wrong, there is an inkling to press. It's all internal pressure. We don't read anything into the articles or the rankings."

The first of those losses was a 5-1 defeat at the hands of Brookfield Central and star pitcher Ricky Leachy, who flat-out stymied the Knights on June 18. Two days later, the Knights left seven runners on in a 3-2 loss to Cudahy in the South Milwaukee Wood Bat Tournament.

"There was too much of everyone waiting for someone else to do the job instead of stepping up and doing it ourselves," Semmelhack said. "There were a lot of points in the games where we didn't get clutch hits."

But the third loss was most frustrating. Oak Creek outhit Brookfield East, 12-6, but lost, 5-4, in 10 innings largely because of seven walks and six errors.

"They were 8-2 in conference and we gave them 13 bases," Holler said. "The fact that it was 5-4 is almost a miracle. It was the toughest one to swallow, and that's when we realized we needed to shake things up."

The shakeup included moving Robert Weis from down in the order up to the two-hole and dropping Widenski down from two to three. Teaming Weis, who is adept at getting on base, with leadoff hitter Schneider gives Widenski more runners to drive in when he bats.

The results have been striking. Oak Creek has won five straight as of Tuesday, including three 10-run efforts. In back-to-back wins over West Allis Central on June 24 (10-8, 10 innings) and June 25 (10-1), Widenski was a combined 6-for-8 with four RBIs and a home run.

Holler knew it was just a matter of time before the Knights clicked again.

"There's some underachieving going on and they know that, but last year (when the Knights went 29-9) we came out on the other end of a lot of those (close) games," Holler said. "We're (14-5) with three losses by one run. These guys have been through so many of those games you expect them to come through."

Semmelhack, who will play at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee next fall, said that experience helped the Knights through the recent rocky times.

"Last year we had a rough patch around the same time and then we started coming together and lighting it up and going off on teams," he said. "We knew we'd overcome it (this year) and start playing good baseball again. The past couple of games, everyone's hitting the ball and believing in themselves which allows us to put runs on the board, which is what we do best."