After battling arm injuries for years, pain-free Sully Kazee stars as St. Rita’s ace. ‘It’s just crazy to me.’

A couple of years ago, Sully Kazee was on the verge of giving up on being a pitcher. Now, the senior right-hander is St. Rita’s ace and a college recruit.

Frustrated by a sequence of arm injuries that affected him in four straight seasons, Kazee nearly shut things down on the mound.

“I told my mom when I was a sophomore, ‘If I get hurt again, I don’t think I want to pitch anymore,’” Kazee said. “I said, ‘I think I want to be done. It’s not worth it.’

“It’s just crazy to me that now my arm doesn’t hurt and I’m going to pitch in college.”

Kazee, who is committed to Southeastern in Iowa, is certainly getting the job done in high school.

He continued his dominance Monday, striking out 10 and tossing a two-hitter to lead the host Mustangs to a 5-1 win over De La Salle in a Catholic League crossover in Chicago.

Vinny Stubitsch went 2-for-3 with a run, a double, a triple and an RBI for St. Rita (9-2). Heartland recruit Colin Quinn finished 2-for-3 with a double.

Kazee allowed only an unearned run, improving his record to 4-0 with a 1.82 ERA while impressing his teammates yet again.

“Sully is a beast,” Stubitsch said. “He pounds the strike zone. He has that dog mentality. He knows he’s going to win.”

Beckett Hulten doubled and scored the lone run for De La Salle (9-3), while Jon Glass added a single. Vicente Amaro threw five strong innings, striking out five and allowing two earned runs.

With the game scoreless heading into the fourth inning, Kazee was fueled by the pitcher’s duel.

“It feels like an internal battle during the game,” Kazee said. “I’ve got to beat him and I’ve got to do better than him to give my team a chance. I like that.”

Kazee didn’t bat Monday but he’s contributed offensively throughout the season, ranking third on the team with 11 RBIs. He’s played first base or served as the designated hitter in most games that he hasn’t pitched.

Kazee pointed out that he blossomed into a solid hitter by necessity when the arm problems limited his pitching from the time he was playing 12U all the way until his sophomore season.

“I fractured my growth plate a couple times, strained my UCL,” Kazee said. “I’d throw a few games and it would just start hurting again. It stunk. So, I had to start swinging it.

“That helped me so I can be a two-way player for us now. But I’ll be a pitcher only in college.”

Stubitsch, meanwhile, broke the scoreless tie when he ripped a two-out RBI triple down the left field line in the fourth. The Mustangs added two more runs that inning on a pair of errors.

it also gave Kazee some breathing room.

“The whole game, we couldn’t get the bats going,” Stubitsch said. “But I was just looking for a fastball middle-in and I was able to poke it out there down the line.

“I was struggling the first five or six games of the year and the last couple weeks I’ve been getting it going, so it felt really good to help the team out.”

It all added up to the sixth win in a row for coach John Nee and the Mustangs, who are undefeated against in-state competition.

“We don’t have any players that scouts are coming out to watch,” Nee said. “We don’t have many people ranking us or things like that and that’s fine with us.

“We’ve just got a bunch of winning baseball players.”

That definitely includes Kazee.

“I’ve always loved baseball,” Kazee said. “My dad told me I’d want to hit in the backyard when I was 2 years old. It’s always been my dream to play baseball as long as I can.”