The team photos with the trophy were just about finished Sunday when Beechwood Coach Kevin Gray called out: “How about one with the coaches now?”
Add a dozen coaches to all the players from the first photos and the larger group shots prove much more challenging to both pose and take. No problem. Answering challenges is what they do at the Ft. Mitchell school.
And yeah, you heard right: those 12 adults involved as coaches and support staff in this Tiger program make it so much bigger than the Class “A” Ft. Mitchell school’s numbers might indicate.
Let’s be honest here, small schools do not win three straight Northern Kentucky regional baseball titles the way Beechwood just did. A small school with a big program does.
Not that there was a chance a small school wouldn’t emerge as the victor Sunday, the way Beechwood did despite a 3-0 deficit against upstart St. Henry before roaring back with 17 hits for a 12-4 romp. The win will send the Tigers to Lexington for an 8:30 p.m. opening round state tournament game Thursday against Region 3 champion Owensboro Catholic at UK’s Kentucky Proud Park.
“It was nice to see small schools like us get there,” St. Henry Coach Greg Pass said but then gave the nod to a Beechwood lineup that doesn’t look – or play – like a small school: “One through nine they’re just so dangerous.”
Indeed. That’s the problem with defining Beechwood baseball. Other teams when they get past their ace pitcher, well, good luck. Beechwood has Sam Cottengim, Matt Kappes, Sam Stacy, and Torin O’Shea.
But more than that. “All the other teams in the region drop off after you get to the 4 and 5 hitters,” said the man who bats second for Beechwood, Brett Holladay. “Our bottom half is as good as our top half.”
It certainly was Sunday. Maybe better. And maybe the major reason why there’s no panic in Tiger-land when a St. Henry, for example, jumps out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning.
“We’re not going to lose a game in the first, second or third innings,” said Tanner Jackson, the Regional MVP and the No. 6 hitter in the Tiger lineup who has been on a tear since returning from meniscus surgery two weeks ago. And after putting in the extra work to do so.
“A lot of kids wouldn’t even have tried to come back from surgery this late in the season,” Gray said of the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Jackson, who will play football at Kentucky Wesleyan next year. “We wouldn’t have won the regional without him.”
The list of names of people who they might not have won without starts with those dozen coaches working with individual players. Holladay talked of how he’s been able to work with Jackson and Beechwood’s other MVP candidate, pitcher-center fielder Mitch Berger to get in extra hitting.
But Holladay had the time to figure out his recent plate issues that had him not seeing the ball as well as he’d like and now getting good swings on good pitches because guys like no. 8 hitter Jackson Roseburrough stepped up. Stepped up and hit one into the fair pole netting down the left field line – a three-run shot that gave Beechwood its first lead at 4-3.
By the time this one finished up, Holladay lofted one just a little past Roseburrough’s down the left field line, a two-run shot that has him looking like he’s back.
What about starter Cottengim, 5-0 with a 1.31 ERA despite his role as the regular second baseman? “We rolled the dice with Sam” after he gave up three first-inning runs, Gray said, and he got them into the fifth. But all No. 7 hitter Cottengim did was hit a single, double, triple, and another single with a couple of RBI just to make it clear how dangerous the bottom of this order can be.
But it wasn’t all offense. Berger, the two-way football star who plans to concentrate on baseball in college at Eastern Kentucky, showed off his speed and outfield skills with two big plays. The first on a ball in the bright direct sun from behind home plate that made several outfielders lose the ball as it looked like Berger was about to twice himself before catching it on the way down to a seated position, fighting it all the way to the ground.
Berger followed that with a major league play that’s hard to make in high school because high school players can’t hit the ball hard enough to make you have to make that play. But Eli Meiman pounded one 390 feet directly at and over Berger who pivoted, gave it the old Willie Mays drop step and sprinted to the spot, catching it on the dead run and making it look almost routine at the base of the fence.
“We’ve been working on our Willie Mays Hayes’ drop steps,” Berger said of how the Beechwood coaches had prepared him for the moment with a take from the fictional character in the movie “Major League.” He’d never heard of the actual Willie Mays’ iconic catch from the 1954 World Series. But with the score 7-4 and a runner on, without that catch, this game might have been very different.
But it was victory No. 27 for a Beechwood team that has been talking all season about getting downstate and doing it right this year. No early exit.
NINTH REGION NOTED: Here’s the All-Tournament team: Ayden Lohr, Conner: Brayden Stewart, Ryle: Nick Darpel, Covington Catholic; Logan Wilson, Dixie Heights; Jack Hendrix and Abe Hils, Highlands; Dominic Drury and Connor Seiter, Newport Central Catholic; Matt Miller, Owen Eilerman, and Carter Scheben, St. Henry; Mitchell Berger, Sam Cottengim, and Brett Holladay, Beechwood; and MVP, Tanner Jackson, Beechwood.
This story has been corrected to indicate that the final score of the Beechwood-St. Henry game was 12-4, not 15-4 as was previously published. LINK regrets the error.
