QUICK READ: Welter’s summer options limited by injury

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Batavia trailed Cary-Grove by five runs and counting as Ryan Welter squirmed in familiar pain.

He would learn later he had injured his right wrist on a Trojans’ bat while trying to catch a runner stealing, but at that point – the fifth inning of a season-ending loss in the IHSA Class 4A Rockford Supersectional – he didn’t care.

“Even though I thought the game was more or less out of hand,” Welter said, “there was no way I was going to sit out my last baseball game at Batavia.”

The play ended up costing the Bulldogs’ co-captain a good part of his summer season, too, as Welter learned this week of an additional compression crack in his forearm. The diagnosis means the Benedictine-bound catcher, still searching for summer ball possibilities, can only hit.
Throwing, for now, is out of the question.

His latest bruises remind Welter of a time earlier in his high school career, when he was a three-sport athlete. Weeks before being called up to the varsity football team, he suffered a break to his wrist on a “pretty ugly” collision against archrival Geneva.

He played through it until a fall in a midseason sophomore basketball game, against the Vikings again.

“That completely shattered my wrist, so that was the end of it,” Welter said.

He meant the end of holding out on a doctor’s visit.

Welter’s mother steered him toward immediate medical care this time around, which included a doctor’s visit on the day after the Cary-Grove game. Welter learned the results of his MRI on Tuesday. Although it troubled him initially, he took comfort in knowing his college choice is set regardless of what he might do this summer.

“I’m not really in bad shape either way,” Welter said.

An initial opportunity to join Bulldogs teammates Tim Drish and Brian Krolikowski on the Illinois Sparks travel team this summer no longer appears as promising, but St. Charles American Legion Post 342 still wants Welter.

St. Charles assistant coach Gary Kowalski said the team is looking to bolster its 14-player roster with Welter and recent Marmion graduate Dave DeSimone, a Batavia native, and hopes to hear from them by week’s end.

Welter’s jersey number, 25, remains available for Post 342.

She would know: Ask a Swede how Nordic Geneva’s annual Swedish Days festival is and she giggles for a moment.

“I would say that it’s not really Swedish more than the flags,” Hanna Borjesson said, “although they do sell Swedish fish.”

Until she hears ABBA performing on the Third Street stage or spots vendors hawking meatballs and potatoes rather than hot dogs and brats, that’s how Borjesson’s assessment will stay. The recently graduated exchange student and Vikings badminton player pledged to keep her eyes open for more authentic items at the fair as the week progressed.

“Maybe I’ll find something else later on,” Borjesson said.

Borjesson’s family is set to visit Swedish Days today, kicking off a trip that includes a brief tour of the United States before the group returns to its homeland.

Borjesson stayed with the Stopka family of Geneva during the school year.

• Kevin Druley is a sports reporter for the Chronicle. Call him at 630-845-5347 or e-mail kdruley@kcchronicle.com.