By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
You don’t win 27 games and end up with a Ninth Region baseball championship, as the Highlands Bluebirds did Thursday night at Thomas More Stadium, without having answers.
Lots of answers. Except, as it turns out after their 5-2 win over Beechwood’s 25-win Tigers, there was one question these Bluebirds could not answer.
Is it their hitting, or their pitching, that sets this team apart?
“I think it’s both,” said Region MVP Brooks Hendrix, who kept his offensive onslaught going on a two-for-four night, with a double and two runs scored. Although he made an argument that maybe it is, indeed, the hitting.
As Hendrix noted: “I think we have more hits than any team in the state” of a Highlands’ team hitting .345 going into the regional. Well, they do have more hits per game than any other team with the three teams ahead of them in total hits all having played more games.
But then Thursday’s winning pitcher, Jake Robinson, noted how “unreal” the Highlands’ pitchers have been “matching each other with a complete game” as Adam Forton and Garrett Wiggins preceded him with each going a full seven innings.
“Kudos to them,” said Kevin Gray, Beechwood’s coach who had a bad feeling as he scouted opponents during the season focusing on Ryle and Covington Catholic at first and then realizing the more he studied region rivals, the more he thought that this Highlands team was “flying under the radar.”
No more. They can hit it. They can pitch it. And until Thursday when they started throwing the ball around for four errors, they could really defend it.
“For the last half of the season, our defense has been really, really good,” said first-year coach Brian Benzinger, a 20-year veteran coaching at New Richmond in Ohio who has stepped into a pressure situation replacing Jeremy Baioni, who twice took Highlands to the state championship game in the last decade and now Benzinger will take Highlands back to the state tournament after a seven-year absence. A big-time performance, Gray said.
Thursday’s win advances Highlands to next Friday’s opening round game against Fourth Region champ South Warren at a time to be determined. The Bowling Green team is 30-8 and hits the ball like Highlands.
But if Highlands has an edge heading downstate, it’s pitching depth with four starters – the three who threw complete games in the Ninth Region tourney and Iain Carner, who shut out Conner two weeks ago.
“It’s been unreal,” said Robinson, who limited Beechwood to four hits with “one of the best high school change-ups I’ve ever seen,” Benzinger said, “he’s a tough guy to hit, like Wiggins, he comes from a different place, not sidearm . . . but he’s hard to pick up.”
That was the evaluation of Highlands’ sophomore catcher Kai Anderson who watched as the seniors lined up for photos by class. “No sophomore class photo?”
“Just me,” said the cannon-armed Anderson who neither plays nor sounds like a sophomore.” And allows Highlands to do things on defense few other teams can.
“They shut our running game down,” Gray said, especially that of Beechwood speedster Tyler Fryman, who had been caught just once in 37 steal attempts this season. So when he led off the fifth getting hit by a pitch and Beechwood trailing 3-2, the obvious play would be for him to go. Only he didn’t.
“We wanted him to go, we all did,” Benzinger said, “we were begging for him to go.” But Fryman didn’t, wary of Anderson but with two outs, there was no other choice. And in a bang-bang play at second, with Anderson skimming a one-hopper right on the base, Fryman was tagged out for just the second time this season on a steal attempt.
As for that bounced peg into second, that was the plan. “This field has short turf, like carpet, so I put it on the ground, it gets there faster,” Anderson said, sounding unlike any sophomore you’ve ever heard. Benzinger backed that up: “I believe anything that kid tells me.”
After jumping out to a 3-0 lead thanks to Hendrix and Nolan Schwalbach in the first and Garrett Wiggins’ aggressively stealing two bases in the second enabling him to score on Schwalbach’s sacrifice fly, the Birds got out early. Beechwood answered in the bottom of the second with a pair of runs fueled by three Highlands’ errors and no hits.
With Beechwood starter Chase Flaherty settling down and holding Highlands to those three runs through his six innings as he battled for his 11th straight win in an undefeated senior season, the Birds broke it open in the seventh off reliever Branton Stiles. Schwalbach opened with a single with Hendrix and Forton following with run-producing doubles for the final 5-2 margin.
“What a career he’s had,” Gray said of Flaherty. “He pitched well enough to win this game.”
Just not against Highlands. Not on this night.
All-Region Team: Jackson Reardon, Covington Catholic: Josh Caudill, Ryle; Jonathan Summers, St. Henry; Chris Meyer, Newport Central Catholic; Owen Caudill, Dixie Heights; Kyle Flynn, Dixie Heights; Everett Hall, Conner; Brady Bushman, Conner; Caleb Arrasmith, Beechwood; Tyler Fryman, Beechwood; Chase Flaherty, Beechwood; Garrett Wiggins, Highlands; Adam Forton, Highlands; Jake Robinson, Highlands; and MVP Brooks Hendrix, Highlands.
SCORING SUMMARY
HIGHLANDS 2 1 0 0 0 0 2 5-7-4
BEECHWOOD 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 2-4-1
Hitters: Highlands: Schalbach, RBI, 2 runs scored; Hendrix, 2-4, double, 2 runs scored, RBI; Forton double, RBI.