St. Joseph-Ogden baseball team answers Galesburg’s early strike and never looks back in a 5-1 victory at home. The Spartans improve to 29-2.
ST. JOSEPH — St. Joseph-Ogden found itself trailing early for the first time in several games, but the Spartans quickly erased the deficit and went on to secure a 5-1 win over Galesburg on Saturday, completing a two-game sweep in their annual round-robin doubleheader.
With the victory, SJO extended its winning streak to 23 games and improved to 29-2 on the season. Earlier in the day, the Spartans held off Reed-Custer 9-5 behind timely hitting and strong bullpen work. The back-to-back wins also marked their 12th consecutive triumph on home turf.
Galesburg (12-17) briefly took control by capitalizing on a passed ball in the top of the first inning to score its lone run. Jameson Dickerson, who led the Silver Streaks with a 2-for-3 performance at the plate, crossed home to give his team a short-lived 1-0 advantage.
St. Joseph-Ogden wasted no time responding. In the bottom half of the inning, the Spartans tied the game when Galesburg committed an error, and then took the lead on a Bryson Houchens RBI double to center field. SJO added another run in the third after Kodey McKinney worked a bases-loaded walk to extend the lead to 3-1.
The Spartans padded the score with two more runs in the later innings, while their defense remained steady behind starting pitcher Parker Fitch. The right-hander delivered a complete-game performance, striking out four and walking none over seven innings while scattering five hits.
SJO tallied nine hits in total, with Trevor Ames and Logan Rosenthal each collecting a pair. Ames, Houchens, and Jared Altenbaumer each drove in a run. Rosenthal added two stolen bases to his stat line, while Ames swiped one and scored once.
Galesburg starter Noah Nalley took the loss, surrendering three unearned runs on four hits over 2.1 innings. He walked two and was unable to record a strikeout.
St. Joseph-Ogden will return to action on Tuesday when it hosts Tri-Valley at 4:30 p.m. Meanwhile, Galesburg looks to regroup against Rock Island on Monday, hoping to capitalize on a Rocks team currently in the midst of a three-game skid.
The Illini’s 18th NCAA Tournament appearance ends in Fort Worth with a 4-0 loss to nationally ranked Oklahoma
FORT WORTH, Texas — Illinois’ postseason run came to a quiet close Friday afternoon as the Illini fell 4-0 to No. 24 Oklahoma in the NCAA Tournament First Round at TCU’s Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center.
In their 18th NCAA appearance under longtime head coach Brad Dancer, the Illini (15-12) found themselves outmatched by a seasoned Sooners squad that controlled key moments in both doubles and singles play.
Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks
University of Illinois tennis player Tyler Bowers rips a forehand shot during the Neitzel Family Open in 2024. The red-shirt sophomore from Bloomington fell in postseason singles play to Oklahoma's Kholo Montsi, 6-4, 6-4.
Oklahoma took the early lead after securing the doubles point with victories on Courts 1 and 3. Illinois did notch a bright spot at No. 2 doubles, where Kenta Miyoshi and Max Mroz earned a 6-3 win over OU’s Kholo Montsi and Luis Alvarez, improving their record to 3-1 as a duo. But it wasn’t enough to shift momentum.
In singles play, the Sooners methodically closed out the match with straight-set wins on Courts 5, 3, and 2 to seal the shutout. Alejandro Melero set the tone with a 6-4, 6-2 win over Mathis Debru at No. 5 singles. That was followed by Alvarez’s 6-4, 6-2 decision over Zach Viiala at No. 3, and Montsi’s 6-4, 6-4 win against Tyler Bowers at No. 2 to officially clinch the match.
The Illini showed signs of life on the remaining courts, but play was suspended once the match was decided. Miyoshi, ranked No. 12 nationally, was locked in a third set against Oklahoma’s Oscar Lacides at No. 1 singles, while Jeremy Zhang led his match on Court 4, and Mroz trailed early on Court 6.
Despite the early exit, Illinois closes the year with a winning record and continues to build under Dancer’s steady leadership, marking two decades of consistency and postseason presence for the program.
The programs have been controversial since they were first proposed. Republicans have been especially critical, saying the programs serve as an incentive for immigrants to cross into the United States illegally and settle in Illinois to receive taxpayer-funded health benefits.
by Peter Hancock Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD – Two state-run health care programs that extend Medicaid-like coverage to noncitizens may have provided significant financial benefits for Illinois hospitals.
That’s according to preliminary results of an ongoing study at the University of Chicago that suggests the programs corresponded, at least in part, to a 15% reduction in the amount of bad debt Illinois hospitals incurred each year since the programs have been in full effect.
Photo: Capitol News Illinois/Peter Hancock
Demonstrators outside the Illinois Statehouse rally for immigrant rights during the 15th annual Latino Unity Day on Thursday, May 8, 2025.
“The number that we find is a 15% reduction,” Aresha Martinez-Cardoso, an assistant professor and researcher at U of C’s Embodying Racism Lab, where the study is being conducted, said in an interview. “We think that that might be a high estimate, given what we know about perhaps other things that are going on that we can't entirely rule out, but we do think that part of that reduction is associated with the policy.”
That translates to an average of $1.5 million per year, per hospital, according to the report, although the exact amount would vary greatly depending on a hospital’s size and the volume of patients it treats who are covered by the programs.
“Our early findings show that this landmark policy isn’t just about access — it also serves as a strategic investment in our hospitals and the health of entire communities,” Martinez-Cardoso said.
Those findings come as Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration is preparing to shut down the larger of the two programs as part of his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year. The Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults, or HBIA, currently covers more than 31,000 eligible noncitizens aged 42-64, at a cost of about $21 million per month, according to the most recent data from the Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
The other program, Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors, covers eligible noncitizens aged 65 and over. That program currently covers about 8,900 individuals at a cost of about $10 million per month. Pritzker has not proposed eliminating it.
The programs were launched in 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a means of extending health coverage to individuals who did not qualify for other publicly funded health care programs solely due to their immigration status. Those include individuals who are in the United States without legal authorization as well as certain legal permanent residents who have not yet been in the country long enough to qualify for Medicaid.
The programs have been controversial since they were first proposed. Republicans have been especially critical, saying the programs serve as an incentive for immigrants to cross into the United States illegally and settle in Illinois to receive taxpayer-funded health benefits.
With the state facing slow revenue growth and a projected budget deficit in the coming year, Pritzker surprised many of his supporters in February when he proposed closing the HBIA program.
Eliminating the program for middle-aged adults is projected to save the general revenue fund about $330 million, according to the governor’s office. Pritzker told reporters after his address in February he expects the federal government will stop reimbursing states for costs associated with programs providing services to noncitizens.
A week after the governor’s budget address, the Illinois Auditor General released a report that said enrollment in both programs and their eventual costs had far exceeded their original projection. The cost for the two programs, the report said, exceeded $1.6 billion over the course of four fiscal years.
Read more: Audit finds Illinois’ noncitizen health care programs far outstripped original cost estimates
Unlike Medicaid, which is jointly funded with state and federal funds, the health programs for noncitizens are funded almost entirely with state dollars.
The study looked at publicly available hospital financial reports to analyze changes in the amount of uncompensated care they provided from 2017 to 2023. It also looked at similar data from hospitals in Indiana and Wisconsin, neighboring states that do not provide health benefits for noncitizens.
“We tried to flip it a few different ways,” Martinez-Cardoso said in an interview. “There could be a lot of other things happening. But when we test a bunch of different models … we kind of see a consistent pattern that the policy timing is associated with bad debt.”
She said the results so far are only preliminary and that analysis of the data is continuing. But she said the analysis so far shows a strong link between the enactment of the programs and an overall reduction in uncollectable debt.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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