Story by: Caleb Hudspeth
Everyone knows of the rivalry between Carroll and Kapaun. Since they are the only two private Catholic high schools in the city, it can get pretty intense. Winning brings bragging rights for the year as the most dominant school in a certain sport. The biggest and most talked about rivalry always seems to be football but the most intensity seems to come from baseball as both teams are evenly matched.
The two teams met in a doubleheader on Friday at Newman University.
“We did the normal daily work of fielding and groundballs, but for the Kapaun game we had a couple of three-hour practices with situations and games to get us mentally prepared for the game and tough situations,” sophomore Adam Theis said.
Game one on Friday showed this intensity. Both teams had great pitchers on the mound and great defensive plays in the field. Junior McCae Allen was the starting pitcher for the Eagles and pitched the whole game with three strikeouts and only two walks.
“I was pleased with the complete game from McCae who only allowed one earned run and kept his composure in tough situations,” Coach Charlie Ebright said.
Even in the third inning when the game was tied 3-3, the chatter in the dugout was light hearted but the competition on the field was at a high intensity. After overcoming a series of fielding errors in the third inning, the Eagles rallied in the fourth to put them three up and from there only allowing one run the rest of the game to win 6-3.
“We swung the bats well and put the pressure on Kapaun — a few defensive errors but kept composure and finished the game well,” Ebright said.
The second game of the series was not as close as the first; the roles seemed to almost switch as Kapaun lead 2-0 after two innings. Fielding errors were costing the Eagles a lot of the runs scored by the Crusaders. Routine ground outs and fly outs cost the eagles a lot of potential runs. Junior Shea Kelly was pitching for the first three innings and then sophomore Jacob Ensz came in to try to clean up the rest of the game.
“I started off all right, just trying to get out of the inning. I started with two strikeouts and after that it went downhill,” Ensz explains.
As fielding errors kept occurring, the Eagles fell 8-3 going into the seventh inning. Momentum was on the Crusaders side as they finished out the game with three straight outs. Fielding errors by the eagles caused most of the runs scored by the Crusaders leading them to victory splitting the series 1-1.
“Shea threw well enough to win – we drug on with errors and it just threw gas on the fire. We just had trouble closing the game out and continued to fight through the physical and mental errors,” said Ebright.
The baseball team currently stands at 8th place in 5A.