The Dixie Heights baseball team boasts 12 seniors, a dugout full of talent and a masterful head coach who has won nearly 800 games in 40 seasons.
It’s a lethal combination at the high school level.
“It’s a senior’s game in my opinion,” said Chris Maxwell, who entered the season ranked 10th all-time in coaching wins in Kentucky high school baseball history with 752. “The older you are as a team, the better off you are.”
Dixie Heights is looking for a bounce-back year after finishing 2023 with a rare losing season. The Colonels had just four seniors and were saddled with a record of 15-22. It was the first time in five years they didn’t have a winning record.
“It was disappointing,” Maxwell said. “Teams played us tough.”
The Colonels took their lumps everywhere except in the 34th District where they held sway with a 5-1 mark against district opponents and won a third straight district tournament championship during a late-season hot streak. Following a 7-17 start to the schedule, the Colonels caught fire and won eight of the next 12 games. Two of their last four losses were by two runs or fewer.
The Colonels tried to make the most of their finishing kick and advanced to the 9th Region tournament semifinals for the first time since 2017. But they were eliminated 4-2 by eventual champion Beechwood despite a clutch performance at the plate and on the mound by junior pitcher Brach Rice.
In the back of his mind that day, Rice knew there was a strong possibility it was his last game in a Colonels baseball uniform. The 6-foot-3 multi-sport standout made a commitment to play college football for the Miami University Redhawks and wanted to concentrate solely on preparing for the next level following the completion of the Dixie Heights football season. That ruled out a senior year of baseball for the all-state linebacker.
“I was done,” said Rice, who hit .321 last season.
He played the outfield and posted an ERA of 3.13 on the mound while winning five games in a team-leading seven starts and two relief appearances.
“At the beginning of my senior year, I was pretty much not determined to play baseball and I thought that was going to be it.”
Rice wound up attending a couple baseball scrimmages as an onlooker. What he saw was a bunch of friends having fun without him. He felt like he was on the outside looking in at something that had the potential to be really special. He started to go back and forth in his mind about playing baseball while weighing the pros and cons of one last season before committing entirely to football.
Up until the scrimmages, Maxwell was increasingly resigned to the reality he was very likely going to be without one of his top players in 2024. That didn’t stop the coach from checking in on Rice when the two crossed paths.
“Max came up to me one day at school and said the dugout didn’t feel right without me in there,” Rice said. “I agreed with him.”
The two had a talk and hammered out some details which allowed Rice to maintain his priorities with the Miami football team.
Voila. Rice was back with the Colonels.
“Having Brach back is huge for our pitching rotation, and he can hit,” said senior catcher and outfielder Braden Shinkle, a .355 batter in 2023. “Last season we saw what happens when you have good pitching in big games. We have a lot of guys this year who know what it’s like to play in those kinds of games.”
Luke Abeling is one of those guys. The senior second baseman is a three-year starter and hits third in the batting order. He led the team in RBI last season and was second in runs, hits, doubles and stolen bases while batting .342.
Abeling, Shinkle and Rice are not the only high-average hitters on the team. There’s also Sean Mitchell, part of an up-and-coming junior contingent. Mitchell hit .315 last season. The Colonels as a team hit .294.
Through the first six games this season, the Colonels’ top hitters are seniors Ryle Cullen and Mason Granger, both batting .400. Mitchell is batting .313. Sophomore Will Steczynski (.253) leads the team in hits, runs, and RBI.
The Colonels were off to a 3-3 start as some key bats have yet to awaken. Coach Maxwell does not expect Abeling, Shinkle and Rice to keep hitting below .230.
Pitching-wise, Tommy Gemeinhardt is the early workhorse. In a pair of starts, he is 2-0 with 20 strikeouts in 11 innings with just three hits allowed and a 0.64 ERA. Kyle Flynn also has a win with a 2.00 ERA. In his first start, Rice pitched five innings and allowed four hits and an earned run while fanning four.
For all the potential Dixie Heights carries in the batter’s box and on the mound, Abeling says the team’s strength may be in the field.
“I think one of our best strengths is our defense,” Abeling said. “If we can improve on being more consistent with our hitting and get good pitching, we can do really well.”
Coach Maxwell believes he has one of the region’s best center fielders in senior Carter Schroer, which makes the Colonels strong up the middle when they are in the field.
Shinkle loves the camaraderie.
“A lot of us, we have close bonds because we’ve known each other for a really long time,” he said. “We can make each other better.”
They’ve got all season to challenge each other to do their best. They have a coach who’s been though just about every conceivable scenario.
“That’s what we preach. Get better than the game before,” Maxwell said. “The potential is there. We just have to keep coming along and it’ll all come together at the end of the year. That’s the hope. It’s happened before. We have a lot of seniors and they have to play like seniors, so I am expecting a lot.”