Bonded Knights Subdue Raiders

An article from the Lafayette Journal & Courier by Nathan Baird

"Many Central Catholic students jetted off to Florida last week to enjoy a leisurely spring break on sunny beaches.

Not the Knights baseball team, which spent four days busing around southern Indiana. While classmates were building sand castles in Fort Myers or West Palm Beach, the Knights visited Mt. Vernon and Huntingburg.

"With those two games, we got everything behind us," senior catcher Tyler Child said. "We got our nerves out of the way, and tonight we went out there and got at it."

Sparked by Child's three-run home run in the third inning, Class A No. 4 Central Catholic defeated Harrison 8-3 on Tuesday at Leming Field. Scott Windler also homered for CC (1-1), and Taylor Glaze (1-0) earned the victory by combining with Brett Haan on a two-hitter.

Harrison, playing without three injured starters, lost its season opener.

"One of our strengths this year is our team chemistry and unity," CC coach Tim Bordenet said. "Getting away and staying together for basically the whole week I think really helped. We have a good mix of older guys and younger guys, and there aren't any egos."

In the past, Central Catholic's baseball players were free to take a more conventional spring break. Players on vacation tried to meet up in small groups for informal practices.

The Knights lost to Mt. Vernon and had a potential victory against Southridge suspended by weather.

"The last few years we've gone down to Florida and had to split up a little bit, so we haven't gotten the work in," said CC senior Matt Combs, who walked three times and had an RBI single. "Taking the loss of not going down to the nice weather helped us out as a team. The live at-bats were a great thing for us."

Taking note of the strong wind blowing out to right field, Child drove a 3-1 offering from Raiders starter Nate Harrison over the wall in right-center. The three-run blast put CC up 6-1.

Harrison's Josh Burkhalter reached on an infield single in the top of third. He stole second and third, then stole home on the front end of a double steal.

Rennie Troggio doubled and scored leading off the Raiders' fourth. That was the last hit for Harrison, which played without injured juniors Ryan Black (concussion) and Patrick Alkire (back) and senior Shane Sullivan (hand).

"Even if we played perfect tonight, we can't compete unless we get better at the plate," Harrison coach Brent Harmon said. "We hit .080 tonight. That's not going to win very many baseball games." "