By Sean Duncan

CRESTWOOD - It didn’t look good for Providence in the first inning of the Southside Conference Challenge. Four errors and three walks led to five Marian Catholic runs.

“I didn’t know if we were sleeping or what,” said Providence coach Mark Smith.

Providence woke up in the following innings and managed to pull out a 6-5 victory in the first of four games pitting the Chicago Catholic Conference against the East Suburban Catholic on Saturday at Standard Bank Stadium.

Providence (8-4) took a 6-5 lead in the third inning when it pushed three runs across. Matt Trowbridge delivered the big blow with a two-run triple, and junior catcher Casey Papp also had a run-scoring double in the inning.

Marian Catholic sophomore left-hander Brett Lilek blanked the Celtics thereafter. Lilek, a 6-foot-4, 180-pounder who’s the No. 1 ranked sophomore in the state, struck out 11 and walked one in six innings, yielding 11 hits, but five were of the infield variety.

“To our credit, we swung the bats much better than we have in a while against a very good pitcher,” said Smith, whose team stole nine bases. “That was a bright spot.”

Junior third baseman Sam Travis continued to swing a hot bat, going 3-for-3 with sacrifice fly. Tim Hanrahan added two hits, a run scored and drove in a run in the first.

Junior left-hander Collin McEnery pitched 2 1/3 innings of shutout relief to close the door on Marian Catholic (4-5), but not before a controversial out call to end the game. Michael Karwoski led off the bottom of the seventh with a double, and advanced to third with two outs. Joshua Pieper then hit a grounder right of second base, where Kevin DeFilippis backhanded the ball and nipped the diving Pieper to end the game.

“It shouldn’t have come to that in the first place,” said Marian Catholic coach Phil Wail. “We had a chance to put it on them early on, but we let them off the hook.”

Pieper had two hits for the Spartans and senior third baseman Nick Orbik had a run-scoring double in the first inning.