By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
Beechwood and Highlands are in the Ninth Region baseball championship game – again. As Northern Kentucky’s two winningest teams seemed to know it would be.
For the fourth time in the last decade, these two suburban “Fort” communities will face off for the right to go to Lexington for next week’s state tournament.
Highlands made it look easy against Dixie Heights while it took a little more doing for Beechwood to get through the semifinals with a 7-3 takedown of a Brady Bushman-led Conner team that would not give in.
“Mike (Hart, Conner coach) said they tried everything,” Beechwood coach Kevin Gray said, and they did, from a daring Bushman two-strike steal of home to tie the game at 3-3 or the two Bushman pickoffs that had Gray shaking his head.
“Brady’s really good,” Gray said, remembering how “he hit a two-run homer to beat us 2-0 last year in the region.”
But no shutout this year. With Tyler Fryman’s two-RBI double in the third getting things going, Beechwood (25-10-1) took the lead away from the Cougars who’d jumped out, 2-0, in the second. Bushman’s steal of home in the fifth tied it. And seemed to wake the Tigers up.
“I told them stop being passive, get aggressive, attack the ball,” Gray said as his guys parlayed a couple of walks, a passed ball, a wild pitch, a hit batsman and a sacrifice bunt around a Hudson Edwards base hit and an Austin Stephenson pinch-hit two-RBI double into the right center field darkness for three runs in the sixth that put this one out of reach.
Out of reach the way sophomore Caleb Arrasmith was pitching, holding Conner to three hits in his six innings while personally adding the final run with a double and a sliding score on a ground ball that had him easily beating the throw.
“I love to fight,” Arrasmith explained his eight-strikeout game that had him fighting his way through a couple of jams while throwing a season-high 106 pitches.
As for the junior Stephenson, “I was so happy for him,” Gray said of a young man “who’s always swinging a bat. I told him, ‘You’re going to get an opportunity.’” And in the sixth inning, with two on and two out, Stephenson did, crushing one to give Beechwood a 6-3 lead.
And now it’s showdown time, as it was in 2016, 2019 and 2023. Although Beechwood may have one advantage here, with top starter Chase Flaherty getting a short outing Tuesday, he can come back and start this game.
“We’ve got Flaherty and (Branton) Stiles,” Gray said. “Highlands is playing well and If they beat them, we’ll wish them luck (downstate).”
But the senior Flaherty, who has won all sorts of awards for his football/baseball stardom, would “give ‘em all up for a win tomorrow,” Gray says.
SCORING SUMMARY
BEECHWOOD 003 003 1—7 7 1
CONNER 020 010 0—3 4 1
WP: Arrasmith (6-0) LP: Bushman (4-3)
Hitters: Beechwood: Fryman 2-4, double, run scored; Arrasmith, 2-4, double, run scored; Welch, 2 runs scored; Stephenson double, 2 RBI; Conner: Bushman double, Brunkel, double.