Poll results: Here’s the high school baseball team of the year in southwest Illinois

Edwardsville High School’s baseball team is the winner of the Belleville News-Democrat Baseball Team of the Year high school poll for 2022, as selected by readers of bnd.com.

The Tigers had a spectacular season, culminating by winning the IHSA Class 4A state championship. EHS defeated Chicago Brother Rice 7-4 in the state semifinals June 10 at Duly Health and Care Field in Joliet before edging Mundelein 4-3 the following day in the state title game.

Along the way, Edwardsville also toppled Alton and Quincy in regional action; Belleville East and Minooka in sectional competition; and Plainfield North in the super-sectional. The Tigers also won the Southwestern Conference title with an 8-2 mark while finishing 36-4 overall and securing the program’s fourth-ever state title.

Edwardsville tallied 56% of the votes to finish ahead of other BND candidates Belleville East High School, Breese Central High School, Columbia High School, Freeburg High School, Mascoutah High School, O’Fallon High School and Triad High School. The poll ended at 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

To be clear, this poll is not scientific. In fact, we invite you to vote as many times as you want. It’s all for fun, BND readers.

The next poll will appear on the BND’s website — www.bnd.com — at 5 a.m. Tuesday and will be a vote on the St Louis City SC professional soccer expansion team that will begin play in 2023. Have other summer poll suggestions as we transition to high school fall sports? Please email them to gvartanian@bnd.com.

Previous baseball poll winners: Alex Wright of Granite City High School (Week 1), Owen Kelly of Belleville East High School (Week 2), Dalton Boruff of Breese Central High School (Week 3), Tyler Tieman of Althoff Catholic High School (Week 4), Evan Davis of Waterloo High School (Week 5), JD Kramer of Belleville West High School (Week 6), Grant Huebner of Edwardsville High School (Week 7) and Joseph Mendiola of Belleville East High School (Week 8). The player of the year, as voted on in Week 9, was Kelly.

This story was originally published June 18, 2022 at 8:30 AM.