By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Don’t ask Chris Maxwell how many times his Dixie Heights’ Colonels have made it to the Ninth Region baseball championship game in his 41 seasons coaching baseball there.
He has no idea.
“I know we’ve lost more than we’ve won,” says a man who’s doing this now that he’s in his 70’s because “I just love the game of baseball, it’s a chess game . . . and being around the kids, they energize you.”
Maxwell’s Colonels did just that Wednesday in the first regional semifinals at Thomas More Stadium with a 7-2 schedule-changing win over a Conner team that went down slugging.
Schedule-changing since Dixie Heights’ Thursday graduation forces the championship game set for that night back to Saturday morning here at 11. For Maxwell, who last won a Ninth Region title in 2013, this would be his fourth championship.
No. 3 in the Ninth Region going into the tournament with a now 26-14 record, Dixie’s Colonels knew they would get either of the top two – Covington Catholic or Ryle. CovCath would have been bad news, Maxwell said. “We haven’t scored a run off CovCath all year – they’ve beaten us 19-0” in three games.
But they won’t have to see those other Colonels and will get a Ryle team that knocked off CovCath in the other semi, a Ryle team Dixie split with, winning 10-9 before losing 7-2.
So there’s that for a Dixie team that’s won 11 of its last 12 and opened this game like it knew the way to win, scoring four runs in the first. Four runs that according to the scoreboard before an official scorer’s change, had this line for runs, hits and errors: 4-0-0. Only later were they awarded a base hit. Still. four runs on one hit.
Conner’s Mike Hart, finishing up his first season coaching the Cougars and with four decades to go to catch up with Maxwell, knew how tough it was the way this one went.
“You can’t spot a good team like that four right away,” Hart said of a loss that had him thinking of what might have been with a 10-hit performance producing just two runs.
“We had a chance at a couple of big innings,” Hart said, but Dixie’s defense and base-running both ways didn’t help that happen.
“We thought we could get that double steal,” Maxwell said of the Mason Granger/Braden Shinkle two-man pilfering that produced the final Dixie run in the fifth inning. Good enough with sophomore Kyle Flynn (8-2) doing what he does – letting his fielders make plays behind him even if he wasn’t as sharp as he’s been, Maxwell said.
“Big game experience hurt us,” Hart said. “We said coming over here if we could scratch out nine/10 hits, we could score some runs.” But two wasn’t enough against a Dixie team that “puts the ball in play.”
With six runs on the board after two innings, all the Colonels had to do was hold on and look to Saturday . . . after getting through Thursday’s graduation.
“That’s a nice ball club over there,” Maxwell said of a 16-24 Conner team that knocked off four-time defending champ Beechwood, 2-0, in the first round to get here. “although their record doesn’t show it.”
A team with one of the region’s best players in Aaron Wichmann, who followed his pitching shutout over Beechwood with a two-for-four night including a deep double while scoring one of the Cougars’ two runs.
But in the end, chalk this up for those Dixie defenders up the middle – shortstop Sean Mitchell and second baseman Luke Abeling. “We’ve got a heck of a defense there,” Maxwell says.
And an opportunistic offense, scoring six runs the first two innings on just three hits. Conner, meanwhile, opened with a double, single and triple in the fourth and scored just one run. In two other innings, the Cougars had two hits without scoring.
“Big game jitters,” Hart said of a team that was still adjusting to a new coaching staff.
SCORING SUMMARY
CONNER 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 – 2 10 2
DIXIE HEIGHTS 4 2 0 0 2 0 x – 7 9 1
WP: Flynn (8-2) LP: Bushman 1-3
LEADING HITTERS: Conner: Wichmann 2-4, double; JJ Bagby 3-3; Webster 2-3, triple, RBI. Dixie Heights: Abeling 2-3, RBI; Pullum 2-3, RBI; Shinkle 2-3.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.