It's been a while since the North Park baseball team could call itself outright College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin champions, but the Vikings are just that after sweeping a doubleheader against North Central College by scores of 4-3 and 5-4 Saturday afternoon in Chicago.

North Park needed late inning heroics to pull out the twinbill sweep in both contests, but things came to fruitition giving the squad, under seventh-year head coach Luke Johnson, its first conference title in one of the toughest conferences in all of NCAA Division III since 1990.

The Vikings earned the comeback victory in the first game when they broke a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the ninth inning on a bases-loaded walk, drawn from senior Ryan Javech. Coincidentally, Javech would drive in the game-winning run in the second game on a bloop RBI single to center field, scoring sophomore Mike Coduto.

Senior pitcher Steve Kuligowski earned the win in the first game, pushing his overall record to 10-2 and becoming only the second player in NP history to notch double-digit victories in a season. Kuligowski worked a complete-game effort, scattering seven hits while striking out two batters and walking one. He fell behind 2-0 in the first inning, but NP's offense picked him up by scoring two runs in the third and one in the sixth on a triple down the right field line from Joe Belmonte, who came in on a wild pitch.

Game 2 belonged to junior Nick Soldano, who turned in yet another masterful performance after earning CCIW Pitcher of the Week honors the week before. Soldano handcuffed Cardinal hitters, as he fanned 11 batters and walked one. To North Central's credit however, NCC did connect for seven hits and four runs and were in position for the win, but NP's offense once again bailed out Soldano in the pinch to give him his eighth win of the season against one loss.

North Park currently sits at 28-11 overall and 13-7 in the conference with the final game of the three-game set with NCC tomorrow afternoon.