Dominant on the mound, Beechwood claims 9th Region title

Despite the target on their backs for months, Beechwood never flinched.

The Tigers got another dominant pitching performance and won the 9th Region baseball championship on Thursday at Thomas More Stadium in Florence over Ryle, 4-0.

In three games in the tournament, the Tigers pitchers gave up one earned run and pitched three complete games between Paul Stephenson, Caleb Arrasmith and tournament MVP Sawyer Carlisle.

“We pulled a Highlands, they did it last year,” Tigers coach Kevin Gray said. “Paul Stephenson in the first game was fantastic and then Caleb was Caleb and then I mean Sawyer today was just phenomenal. I can’t say enough good things about about Sawyer today. I mean, you shut out that lineup you’ve done something.”

Beechwood (32-9) wasn’t coming up short this year, losing in the region championship last year to Highlands. They entered the season as the preseason No. 1 in the region and never really let that title go throughout the year. They went 20-3 in the region throughout the year and won 32 games.

“Preseason number one and everything else, I just think the target on our back was really big and I knew it was going to be tough, but just resilient,” Gray said. “This team is just resilient, worked their butts off. When we’re done practicing, they’re not. They always stayed and worked on things in the barn or whatever. So it’s just a resilient group.”

Despite being one of the top offenses in the state all season, it was small ball that carried them on Thursday night, a sac fly, a run scored on a wild pitch and then taking advantage of an error accounted for three of their four runs.

“We played small ball today because we weren’t stinging it like we usually do,” Gray said. “Caleb Arrasmith is hitting .450 or whatever and lays a perfect bunt down the third base line. We work on it every day. I’m not afraid to do it, we tried a squeeze and luckily they threw the ball away. But we work on squeezes everyday, we work on sacrifices every day, hitting behind the runners and everything else. I wasn’t afraid to do it and it was part of our game today.”

The first run that broke the 0-0 stalemate came in the fourth when Zach True hit a sac fly to left to score Brooks Becker. They tacked on two more in the fifth when courtesy runner Kellen Siemer scored on a wild pitch and Carlisle helped his own cause with an RBI single to left. The fourth run came in the sixth when True reached on an error to score Arrasmith.

That was more than enough for Carlisle, who issued just one walk on the night and struck out nine Raiders. He allowed five hits in the complete game effort and was efficient in his 100 pitches, 66 of them going for strikes.

“Off speed, getting ahead with it early,” Carlisle said. “Especially on their one, three and four hitters. Those are some power guys and you got to keep them off the bases if we want to win. So it was just getting ahead with off speed and able to kind of pitch backwards a little bit.”

The win gets them their fifth region title in the last seven seasons after winning four in a row from 2019-23 (there was no 2020 season due to COVID). They’ll head down to Lexington and play at Legends Field against West Jessamine on June 5 at 8:30 p.m. The Colts are coached by former Cincinnati Red Austin Kearns.

Ryle’s season comes to a close at 25-15, a region and district runner-up, a remarkable effort considering they lost 13 seniors a season ago.

“Gotta give Joe (Aylor) credit,” Gray said. “They lost 13 seniors last year and you come back and you’re in this game with losing that many players. That’s a testament to him and his program.”

Ryle had their chance in the fifth inning of this one when Broddick Parr and Abram Pabst led off with back-to-back singles. They were sacrificed over to second and third, but the Raiders couldn’t find the timely hit from there. A picked off runner in the third and nine strikeouts certainly didn’t help the cause.

“There’s a lot of little things that we did wrong throughout the game that you can’t do against a pitcher like that,” Raiders coach Joe Aylor said. “Regular season, you can get away with it, but you get down to the regional finals and those little things pile up. It’s not one here or there, it’s just kind of compiling them all together turned into a situation that we kind of couldn’t get out of.”

Needing to use their top two arms in the first two rounds in Xaden Hughes and Nik Carter, the Raiders turned to AJ Davis and he kept the potent Tigers lineup at bay for four innings, allowing four hits and three earned runs with three walks and three strikeouts. He ran into trouble in the fifth when the first two runners got on and was replaced by Isaac Curry.

Ryle’s turnover won’t be as heavy this year, losing nine seniors, but quite a few of them leave making their mark.

“The kids come with the expectation that we’re going to compete,” Aylor said. “If you would have told me that we were going to be losing 13 seniors and come back and make it to the regional finals and put up a fight against a team that’s very good and be one of the top 32 teams in the state of Kentucky, we’ll take it. I’ll take that every year. Very proud of them, just the work that they’ve put in throughout the year to battle and do what they had to do to get to this spot. you know.”

In Beechwood’s four prior trips from 2019-23, they went 2-2 in the first round at the state tournament.

All-Tournament Team

All Tournament team (from right to left): Michael Bryson (Covington Catholic), Kai Anderson (Highlands), Landon Schuler (St. Henry), Max Meyer (Newport Central Catholic), Kyle Flynn and Will Steczynski (Dixie Heights), Brady Bushman and Everett Hall (Conner), Xaden Hughes, Michael Flowers and Nik Carter (Ryle), Paul Stephenson, Caleb Arrasmith, Zach True and MVP Sawyer Carlisle (Beechwood).

BEECHWOOD 4, RYLE 0