Wyatt Haupt – shown here diving into home plate to score a run this past season – and his Eastern Brown High School Warriors led a contingent of area Brown County teams that reached heights not seen in years.
For four months, this part of Brown County has been a baseball hotbed
The start of fall high school sports practices is just days away.
Still, summer baseball is all the rage here – a reminder of spring grandeur in this part of Brown County.
Many of the top players from Eastern Brown, Western Brown, Fayetteville-Perry and Ripley-Union-Lewis-Huntington high schools are wrapping up summer play with amateur baseball teams across the area.
But it wasn’t all that long ago that the four baseball programs combined for one of the greatest high school baseball seasons ever in this part of the county.
In fact, one team even played into last month, proof that baseball is hardly just a summertime thing in this part of the county.
Eastern Brown advanced all the way to the Division III regional semifinals June 1 – when some players were already making the transition from high school baseball to summer ball. That’s two wins from the state tournament, and the Warriors very easily could have been within one win of state.
Eastern had a seemingly comfortable 5-1 lead over Cadiz Harrison Central through five innings in the regional semifinals at Beavers Field in Lancaster before allowing seven runs over the final two innings in an 8-5 loss. Harrison Central won again the next day to advance to the Division III state tournament, where it lost in the championship game.
“Regardless of the loss in the regional semifinal game, we were one of 16 teams – out of about 190 teams – in Division 3 that was still playing on June 1st and that is something to be proud of,” Eastern coach Steve Goetz said at the time. “Although the loss to Harrison Central was disappointing, it does not take away from what this team accomplished this season.”
Among those accomplishments was a district title – only the school’s second ever, with the first coming 15 years ago – and section championship. The Warriors peaked at the right time, reeling off three consecutive victories in the section/district tourney.
Individually, Eastern junior pitcher Wyatt Haupt was named to the Ohio High School Baseball Coaches Association all-state honorable mention team, the only area county player named to any of the all-Ohio teams.
“As I told the team after the game, the loss to Harrison Central hurts right now but the sting will go away and we’ll have incredible memories of a great season,” Goetz said.
The Warriors aren’t alone: The three other area county schools that fielded baseball teams also had seasons to remember.
In Division IV, Ripley, like Eastern, also got hot when it counted most, putting together a season-high three-game winning streak in early May, near the end of the regular season, then continued to build on that en route to the school’s first section baseball championship since 1978.
“I preached all year of continuous improvement and that we would play our best baseball at the end,” Ripley coach Cary Gray said after the season. “I feel like winning the sectional validated their (the players’) commitment.”
Also in Division IV, Fayetteville-Perry joined Eastern and Ripley as section champs.
“We only won four games last year and finished fourth in Division 2 of the SHAC (Southern Hills Athletic Conference). This year we won 11 games (overall) and finished tied for second in Division 2 of the SHAC,” Rockets coach Chris Snider said after the season. “I’m really proud of our seniors and how they led by example and put in the work to make us better.”
While Western Brown lost in extra innings in the first round of the always-tough Division I playoffs, the Broncos won their first-ever Southern Buckeye Athletic and Academic Conference American Division title in 2023, with junior ace pitcher Abe Crall earning Player of the Year and Jon Crall – Abe’s father – Coach of the Year for the Broncos.
And for area county teams, with arguably the two best players – Abe Crall and Eastern’s Haupt – returning in 2024 …
Wait ‘til next year.