Bluebirds Smash Colonels

Highlands Puts 10 on Scoreboard in Win over Arch-Rivals

PHOTO: G. Michael Graham, Fort Thomas Matters. Highlands defeated Covington Catholic, 10-1 on Wednesday to move to 11-2 in 9th Region play.

The arch-rivals may be down some compared to usual.

But their uniforms still say Covington Catholic on them. Therefore, the Highlands Bluebirds baseball team (22-8 overall) did not let the guard down pulling away late for a 10-1 9th Region victory at Highland Park over the Colonels (16-14). Highlands has won three straight to move to 11-2 in region play.

Senior Grady Cramer (6-2) threw six innings to pick up the win. He struck out four, walked five and allowed just one earned run. Senior Steven Grimme pitched the seventh striking out one and allowing one hit. Both teams committed one error.

"It says a lot about the seniors stepping up when it's big, especially against a team like CovCath," Cramer said. "CovCath is always going to be CovCath. They're going to give us their best all the time. They have good hitters up and down their lineup. We played the game right."

Highlands went 14-for-31 in the game for a .451 batting average compared to 5-for-23 for a .217 clip for CovCath. Junior Ethan Kavanagh went 3-for-4 with a home run, double, two runs batted in and three runs scored for Highlands and senior Cooper Schwalbach went 3-for-4 with a double, home run, three RBI and two runs scored.

"It was a really good day for us," said Jeremy Baioni, Highlands Head Coach. "We swung it well. We had some really good pitching and made some big plays behind them - a couple double plays, infield ground balls from first to third. Those plays were big to keep them out of a big inning. Guys understand with just over a week left in the regular season that we need to prepare for the district tournament. We need to go in every game like it's the district or region tournament. I really liked our focus and how we went about things (Wednesday)."

Highlands had five players with multi-hit games. Senior Casey Greene went 2-for-3 with a double and two runs scored with senior Bryce Ziegler going 2-for-3 with two RBI and senior Chris Bridewell went 2-for-4 with an RBI and two runs scored.

CovCath and Head Coach Bill Krumpbelbeck are known to play unconventional baseball. But Baioni said the Colonels did not do anything out of the ordinary in the game. The closest thing to that was attempting to take third on a throw to first. The runner beat the throw to third, but overslid the bag.

Highlands travels to Simon Kenton on Friday. Game time is 5 p.m.