They hadn’t seen each other since last June 6. Since then, Beechwood’s Tigers had lost just one baseball game – to Danville in the state tournament in Lexington.
A long time ago.
Since last June 6, Conner’s Cougars have lost just one game as well. But the veteran Hebron club – with 10 seniors, another 12 juniors and off to a 13-1 start — hadn’t forgotten the last time they played top-dog Beechwood going into Friday’s home game against the unbeaten Tigers (10-0).
“It was embarrassing,” said Brad Arlinghaus, Conner’s coach since 2014 and winningest baseball coach in school history.
“It was like 10-0,” said catcher Briggs Yuenger, a brawny guy heading to Eastern Kentucky to play hockey. Along with senior teammates Gage Testerman, a shortstop who can make the play deep in the hole while blasting a couple of home runs (his fourth and fifth of the season) with four RBI and Cody Crawford, who went four-for-four with two runs scored, the Cougars scored 11 runs, scored in every inning and beat back Beechwood 11-7 Friday to put themselves squarely in the middle of the battle for best baseball team in Northern Kentucky.
“It’s just April 14,” Arlinghaus said. There’s a long way to go. “We want to win the district championship, the regional championship and a state championship.” But not to get too full of themselves. “Every team but one goes home with tears in their eyes.”
But hopefully not after a 10-0 whitewash like last year. “I credit our seniors with what’s going on,” Arlinghaus said. “If they’re (the seniors) not bought in . . . “ it’s going to be a long season.
But just listening to Testerman, Yuenger, and Crawford after the game, they could – and did – finish one another’s answers. Or answered all together.
Yes, they “knew they were going to get runs,” they agreed, with a team of “contact hitters” as they described themselves “who hit with power.”
What they need to play with is “our defense and pitching,” Yuenger said. What they do have, again with all agreeing to the buy-in there “is our dugout . . . definitely the dugout,” said Gage, who was hitting .678 (24 of 38) coming into the Beechwood game where he was three for four. You do the math.
At just 165 pounds after pounding a couple of balls more than 360 feet over the fence in right-center field, Testerman looks like a heck of a get for NAIA power Indiana University-Southeast. “He hits it with everything he’s got,” Yuenger said.
As he did in the bottom of the first inning to get Conner on the board after Beechwood catcher Brice Estep had opened with a two-run blast to the same spot Testerman hit it to. But with Crawford getting his first hit the next inning in a three-run rally, the Cougars were off and running.
Yuenger’s first of his three doubles was a part of that rally and two more where Conner just kept stringing together hits – 14 in all – to keep out of reach of a Beechwood team that refused to quit, putting up seven runs on the road.
“We knew they were going to get runs,” said Crawford, who played four positions in football and is headed to the University of Alabama to study engineering. They also knew something else. “You’re not going to beat them with two runs.”
But to get 11, you need everybody. “We’re solid through nine (spots in the order),” Yuenger said.
Jackson Bucks (2-1) got the win, going five innings and departing with a 9-4 lead. For Beechwood’s Sam Stacy, who had given up just one run in his three wins, it was his first loss.
Beechwood leadoff hitter Cameron Boyd led the Tigers with three hits and two runs scored. But it just wasn’t enough. Not against a Conner team that’s “swinging the bats pretty good,” Arlinghaus said. “This is the most well-rounded team we’ve had . . . but we have yet to play a complete game.”
But they have scored double-digit runs in 10 games now. And as Arlinghaus says, “Sometimes we’re going to have to win ugly,” as they did in Thursday’s 5-4 win over Boone County.
Now if they can ever get it together – hitting, pitching and defense — watch out. As his players were still out on the field working with grade school age baseball players who had shown up for the game, Arlinghaus looked on proudly.
“They enjoy each other, they have fun with each other,” he said of all the happy faces on his players that had carried over from the game to the post-game.
If they can beat Beechwood like this, and have yet to play that complete game, once they do, smiling may become the go-to move for this Conner baseball team.
