The 9th Region baseball tournament got underway on Monday with all four quarterfinal games played at Thomas More Stadium in Florence.
The four winners move on to Wednesday’s semifinals at Thomas More Stadium, with those games set to be played at 5 and 8 p.m.
Here’s how Monday’s action went down:
CONNER 2, BEECHWOOD 0
The Cougars put an end to Beechwood’s four-year reign on the region, denying the Tigers a chance at a fifth straight region title.
Conner rode Aaron Wichmann to victory, the senior hurler pitching a complete game, three-hit shutout as he struck out eight and walked four in 99 pitches.
Wichmann got 10 outs via a fly ball and kept the Tigers hitters off-balance for the majority as Beechwood had runners in scoring position only twice all game.
“My breaking stuff I got over, they threw their hands at it and I get outs,” Wichmann said. “Just being efficient early in the count. The fastball was working pretty well and blew it by them and got ahead early in the counts.”
Brady Bushman’s home run in the top of the sixth inning broke the scoreless tie, taking a 1-0 pitch just over the right center field wall. Bushman had struck out in his prior two at-bats, the home run the first of his varsity career.
“I was sitting fastball the whole time,” Bushman said. “The prior at-bat I watched a fastball go right down the middle and I was mad after that. So after that one fastball I was sitting on the whole time, I decided to turn on it and it went pretty far and felt good off the bat.”
Wichmann helped his own cause in the same inning, his sacrifice fly to left scoring Rex Richter as the Cougars manufactured the insurance run with Richter drawing a walk, stealing second, advancing to third on a groundout and scoring on Wichmann’s fly ball to left.
“You could feel the tension as the innings went on,” Cougars coach Mike Hart said. “It was like who was going to flinch first. Aaron has been our guy and he loves that role. I like to call him our bulldog and he loves that role of getting the ball, putting the team on our shoulders and let’s go.”
Conner (16-23) had struggled leading up to this one, losing 15 of their last 18, but eight of those losses came by three runs or less.
“We’ve prepared for this. The schedule we played, all the close games we’ve played and we’ve played some really good teams down the stretch,” Hart said. “We may not have come out on top in those games, but it made us better and built some confidence in knowing we could play some of the top teams in the state. It was time for us to breakthrough on one and it was a great time to do it.”
Chase Flaherty was just as good on the bump in defeat for the Tigers, pitching a complete-game two-hitter as he struck out nine and walked four on 103 pitches.
“Chase had a great year for us. This was his first loss of the season. He didn’t deserve to lose, you give up two hits and kid just hit a good shot,” Tigers coach Kevin Gray said. “When you don’t score and get any opportunities to bunt guys over that’s what happens.”
The Tigers (22-14) just couldn’t get much going offensively as they loaded the bases in the bottom of the second and thought they had a runner at third in the bottom of the fifth, but Carson Welch was called out at second for apparently leaving early on a fly ball to left and tagging up.
“Only had one runner get to third,” Gray said. “You have to tip your cap, he kept us off balance. We prepared for him for four days and sometimes when they pitch that well, it’s hard to get guys on.”
You’d have to go back to 2017 the last time the Tigers lost in the first round of the region tournament. The future is still bright in Fort Mitchell as they graduate six seniors, but return eight of the 10 players that started in Monday’s contest.
“We got a good core coming back and they’re ready to get back to work tomorrow,” Gray said. “We haven’t had this feeling in a while. I thought it was incredible when Highlands did it (won four straight from 2015-18). Winning this region one year is hard, but to do it four years in a row is incredible. It’s a feeling we don’t like, but it’s baseball and that’s the way it is.”
Conner will face the Dixie Heights on Wednesday at 5 p.m.
DIXIE HEIGHTS 12, NEWPORT CENTRAL CATHOLIC 2 (5 innings)
The Colonels collected 18 hits in the run-rule victory over the Thoroughbreds in advancing to Wednesday’s semifinals against Conner.
Dixie (25-14) put up seven runs in the first inning on eight hits as they found just enough room on the outfield turf as balls dropped all over the outfield. The Colonels top three hitters of Will Steczynski, Sean Mitchell and Luke Abeling combined to go 8-for-10 on the day with eight runs scored and four runs driven in. Abeling had two doubles to go with two RBI.
“Eighteen hits will boost anybody’s confidence,” Abeling said. “We’re feeling pretty good, we’ve been hot for a while.”
Carson Pullum and Ryle Cullen added three hits each, Cullen with two runs driven in as every Colonel in the lineup had at least one hit on the day.
“That first inning we lucked out a little bit on hitting the ball where they weren’t and opened the floodgates up,” Colonels coach Chris Maxwell said. “We’re playing pretty good baseball right now, hopefully we didn’t use all our hits up this game because we’ll need them the next game.”
Thomas Gemeinhardt pitched five innings for Dixie, allowing seven hits, two earned runs, walking two and striking out five on 83 pitches.
The Colonels added three runs in the third and put two more up in the fifth to force the run-rule. Wednesday’s matchup with Conner will be the fourth this season, the Cougars winning twice and the Colonels with a win. Conner won 9-3 on April 6, 4-3 on April 15 and Dixie won 6-5 on April 26.
“They’re a good ballclub, the record doesn’t indicate how good they are,” Maxwell said. “We’ll have our hands full and see what happens.”
NewCath’s (12-19) Connor Seiter took the loss on the mound, allowing 12 hits and 10 earned runs. The defense behind him struggled at times, misplaying a few fly balls and allowing extra outs, especially in the seven-run first inning.
The ‘Breds were led at the plate by Kolton Smith with two hits, Seiter and Henry Brooks with an RBI. Ian Mann added a double and JT Mumper had a triple as NewCath’s season ends with a 12-19 record. They’ll graduate four seniors in Seiter, Noah Ohradzansky, Smith and August West.
COVINGTON CATHOLIC 12, HIGHLANDS 9
Covington Catholic led 9-1 in the fifth inning, only to see themselves in a 9-9 ballgame headed to the seventh inning.
The Colonels responded with three runs in the top of the seventh to eventually prevail over the Bluebirds, 12-9 in Monday’s third 9th Region baseball tournament quarterfinal of the day.
“Bend, don’t break,” Colonels senior Jackson Reardon said. “Really the main thing was keeping the confidence high and keeping the energy up and just keep playing our game and have fun and play loose. When we do that we’re at our best and it’s hard to beat us when that happens.”
CovCath emptied the tank to get this one, using over 15 players to get the victory and three different pitchers. Eli Wagner battled through five innings, allowing five hits and four earned runs to go with five walks and four strikeouts. Marcus Suwinski got the win despite allowing four hits and two runs in the sixth with Charlie Dieruf pitching a scoreless seventh for the save.
Jackson Reardon paced the Colonels at the plate with three hits and three runs scored. Reardon, as the leadoff hitter, was the driving force of helping the Colonels have the leadoff batter reach base in six of seven innings.
“As a team if we get the leadoff guy on we’re more confident at the plate,” Reardon said. “It really puts things off on the right foot and really gets the ball rolling and puts our hitters in position to do some damage.”
A five-run third gave CovCath a 5-0 lead, Parker McKinley with the key hit in the inning on a two-out, pinch-hit, bases clearing double that scored three.
The Colonels (31-5) added three in the fifth to make it 9-1, scoring on a wild pitch and passed ball with Reardon adding the third run on an RBI single.
The Bluebirds (22-17) rally started in the bottom of the fifth as they put six runs across, taking advantage of two Colonel errors and Iain Carner and Callum McAtee with run scoring hits, Carner plating two on a single, McAtee with two on a triple.
With momentum on their side, the Bluebirds scored two more in the sixth as Nolan Schwalbach led off with a triple and was brought home on a Jacob Robinson sac fly. Drew Barth then singled and was brought home on a Brody Benke double, who was thrown out trying to reach third on the hit.
“I told the guys to keep grinding and keep going,” Bluebirds coach Jeremy Baioni said. “They fought back, so proud of the way they fought back just wish as a group we would have played better today. Some things we didn’t do that we had been doing all year.”
The Bluebirds loaded up the bases with two outs, but Suwinski got Adam Forton to foul out to first to end the threat.
The Colonels started their three-run seventh with a walk by Vincent DiTommaso, pinch-runner Jonathan Grooms later scoring on a wild pitch with the bases loaded. Reardon and Dieruf were intentionally walked to get to that point.
“They didn’t want to lose,” Colonels coach Bill Krumplebeck said. “We got embarrassed the other day by Beechwood. Told the guys we had something to prove. I used everybody in this one. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t.”
Alek Yuskewich then provided the insurance with a two-run triple just past the diving centerfielder Schwalbach.
The Colonels advance to Wednesday’s semifinal to face the Ryle-St. Henry winner. Highlands season comes to a close with a 22-17 record and will have a lot of turnover with 12 seniors on the roster.
“Playing hard was never a question with this group,” Baioni said. “I told the guys to be the toughest out of your life and the kids were just grinding against some really good pitching. Super proud of these guys and such a pleasure to coach them.”
RYLE 11, ST. HENRY 1 (5 innings)
The Raiders fell in an early 1-0 hole, but utilized a prolonged two-out rally in the bottom of the fourth with five runs and pull away from the Crusaders for a 11-1 victory in five innings.
Sam Eppley struck out nine St. Henry batters as he went the distance for the Raiders, opting to go with Eppley and save Dylan McIntyre for the later rounds in the tournament.
“We didn’t throw off, we don’t have throw offs,” Raiders coach Joe Aylor said. “We have a 1A, a 1B and a 1C. We felt Sam gave us the best for this particular game and didn’t feel like we could go wrong with either decision.”
The win positions them nicely for Covington Catholic, Wednesday’s semifinal opponent as they’ll have all arms available except for Eppley.
“We’ve got like eight or nine other guys that can pitch in a game for us, so only using one arm tonight is going to get us really far in the regional tournament,” Eppley said. “This year I had a lot of walks and this game wanted to come in and throw a lot of strikes and trust my defense at the end of the day.”
During the five-run fourth, Xavier Owens started the rally with a bloop single to right field, the Raiders following with four more hits, a walk and hit batter. The rally got them to a 7-1 lead, piling up four more runs in the fifth to earn the run-rule victory.
St. Henry took a 1-0 lead on Andrew Flanagan’s RBI single in the top of the third, scoring Jackson Gross. The Raiders responded with two runs in the bottom of the third, Dylan McIntyre roping a double down the right field line to score Anthony Coppola. McIntyre’s double ignited the Raiders offense as they scored 11 runs in a three inning span.
“It was big to get that one run on the board, made it like a 0-0 game and we were ready to go after that,” McIntyre said. “Having a hitting outing like this is big for us because we feel we can carry it over to the next game too.”
The victory sets up a top 20 in the state showdown with Covington Catholic, the two having split their two regular season meetings. CovCath took the first matchup, 3-1 on April 5, the Raiders returning the favor with a 3-2 victory on May 15.
“This is what postseason baseball is about,” Aylor said. “It’s fun. This is why we do this, best against the best, down to the final four of the region, final 64 teams in the state and it’s the best against the best and we know we’re right there with everybody else.”
McIntyre and Oli Morris both collected two hits apiece for the Raiders as eight of the nine Ryle batters recorded a hit and all nine reached base.
St. Henry’s Carson Shea took the loss, pitching 4.1 innings and allowing eight hits and seven earned runs, walking four and striking out five. The Crusaders finish their season at 13-18 with eight seniors on the roster.
