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Huskies’ Knapp Lone Hamilton County Player Selected To Compete In All-Star Baseball Classic
Published June 22, 2011 | Hamilton Heights’ Andrew Knapp has received quite a prestigious honor. Not only is he headed for the Indiana High School Baseball Coaches’ Association North-South Baseball All-Star Classic on July 9-10 in Fort Wayne, but the left-handed pitcher-first baseman is the lone Hamilton County player to be named to the team.
Hamilton Heights senior Andrew Knapp heads for Taylor University this fall/submitted photo.
“Moreover,’’ said Knapp’s coach Rick Hawley, “It is believed it’s the first time this honor has been conferred on a Hamilton Heights baseball player.’’
Knapp, who was a big part of Hamilton Heights’ 14-9 season, will attend Taylor University. He was a first-team selection on the inaugural 2011 Hamilton County Sports Daily Baseball Honor Team.
Knapp hit .458 this past season with 32 RBIs and five home runs, and scored 20 runs.
Knapp posted a 5-2 won-loss record, with a 3.62 earned run average. The lanky youngster struck out 55, and also had a 1.000 fielding average at first base — no errors in 85 chances.
“This is a wonderful recognition of the superb season Andrew had for our team. He performed consistently well all season. And he is a wonderful young man, truly representing all of the best things about high school athletics,’’ Hawley said.”
A doubleheader will be played July 9 at 11 a.m., with action continuing on July 9 at noon. Indiana’s Mr. Baseball will be selected that weekend.
What About Baseball Double Elimination?
Published June 13, 2011 | 
Some noting and quoting, observations, and other thoughts: Could it be that high school baseball needs to be a double elimination tournament just like college baseball?
Denny Kas, a former area high school coach who’s now in the collegiate ranks as an assistant at Huntington College, would love to see that happen.
Such rationale sort of makes sense, you know.
“You need two good pitchers in baseball,’’ the former Noblesville coach said while scouting the Guerin Catholic-Taylor Class 2A sectional baseball championship game at Oak Hill High School. Continue reading
Guerin Catholic Runner-up In Class 2A Sectional Baseball
Published May 31, 2011 | 
Matt Pletzke, who struck out 11, is headed for Ball State.
Losing is hard. Saying goodbye can be even harder.
- Guerin Catholic baseball coach Jeff Buckner had to deal with both Tuesday after the championship game of the Class 2A Oak Hill Sectional.
His Golden eagles came up three runs short in an 11-8 loss to the Taylor Titans, and four-year standouts Tony Zunica and Matt Pletzke soon will be off to college.
With the loss, Class 4A Westfield becomes the only Hamilton County school still alive in the tournament.
Junior Adam Neidlinger had three hits, including s three-run homer to put Guerin Catholic ahead 5-3 inn the fourth inning/HC Sports Daily photos Mark Morrow.
Zunica, the Guerin Catholic High School Valedictorian, will enroll in the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Pletzke will take his blazing fastball to Ball State.
“It’s really hard,’’ Buckner said. “They’ve given us all they’ve had to give for four years, and you simply don’t replace such athletes, such quality young men.’’
Buckner said that Pletzke, a tall right-hander with a great deal of velocity on his fastball, didn’t want to come out of the game. He threw a lot of pitches on a warm day Tuesday, and he also pitched some on Monday in a 14-2 victory over Oak Hill. He walked five, four in a row in what proved to a disastrous sixth inning, and went to 3-2 counts on four of them.
“I didn’t want to ask him for the ball, but it had to be done,’’ Buckner said. “He really wanted to stay in there and keep trying for us.”
Tony Zunica had a three-run homer and was exceptional defensively at first base.
Pletzke, who gave up two early solo home runs and four hits overall, struck out 11. But he seemed to tire in the sixth and walked the bases full. He then walked in a run to cut Guerin Catholic’s lead to 5-4. That inning proved to be thefinal unraveling of the Golden Eagles (17-13). Three straight walks led to a 6-5 Taylor lead.
And before the smoke had cleared, Taylor had pushed across eight runs on only three hits. The Titans sent 12 batters to the plate in that inning.
“It was difficult to watch. It’s not easy to stop. They just snowballed on us. You try to do whatever you can do to get out of such an inning,’’ said Buckner, who used four pitchers.
One of the pitchers was junior Adam Neidlinger, who drilled a three-run homer to centerfield, some 350 feet away, to give Guerin a 5-3 lead in the fourth.
Seitz: Like Indy 500, Baseball ROARRRS . . .
Published May 21, 2011 | I once had a college baseball coach tell me that the thing that hurts local Indiana high School baseball is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, that the Month of May leading up to the Indy 500 hurt baseball because of all of the hoopla and build-up and other special attention given to the race.
Especially in Central Indiana, where both the 500 and sectional baseball bump heads. The Indy 500 runs May 29 at IMS. That means sectionals get under way three or four days before the roar of the engines reaches fever pitch territory at the famed oval.
Former Hamilton Southeastern baseball coach Ken Seitz agrees that the Indy media does focus on the 500 during the Month of May, though he says the 500 has no bearing on high school baseball.
“But, unlike football and basketball,’’ he said, “High school spring sports get little attention anyway — this has been the case for years.’’ Continue reading
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