CovCath wins again in best-vs.-best inter-region rivalry Simon Kenton says can only make them better

By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter

Talk to the head coaches of the two winningest high school baseball teams in Northern Kentucky after they’ve just faced each other twice in four days, and one thing is clear.

High school baseball is hard. Winning high school baseball games against good teams is really hard. Coaching in these games may be even harder.

That’s just the way it is, said Covington Catholic’s Bill Krumpelbeck after his 21-2 Colonels doubled up the score on Troy Roberts’ Simon Kenton’s Pioneers, 10-5, Tuesday after winning 6-3 Saturday.

CovCath Coach Bill Krumpelbeck and Simon Kenton Coach Troy Roberts meet with umpires before Tuesday’s game. (Photo by Dale Dawn/NKyTribune)

“I’d like to play them again,” Roberts said of his 18-7 Simon Kenton team that’s one of the top picks in the Eighth Region much as CovCath is in the Ninth. “That’s how you get better.”

How CovCath has gotten better was simply by growing up for their coach. “I’ve had them since they were freshmen,” he says of his six juniors who “are three-year starters now. I haven’t had that before.”

And for CovCath’s 47-year coaching veteran, the third-winningest Kentucky coach all-time with his 1,118 wins in addition to the 2002 state championship – Northern Kentucky’s lone baseball title in 61 seasons now — whenever he says “he’s never,” you’d better pay attention.

That’s because even with this win, his Colonels started slow, fell behind 2-0 in the first and left four men on base the first three innings all the while “missing four signals the way we did,” Krumpelbeck said.

“That will have me waking up four times in the middle of the night,” he said, “wondering what could I have done better for that not to happen.”

Join the club. Simon Kenton’s Roberts will be waking up as well, he said, wondering how “they scored eight runs with two outs,” as CovCath did in the fourth inning. “We couldn’t get that third out.”

CovCaths Alex Yuskewich celebrates his fourth-inning rally-starting double as Simon Kenton’s Daniel Uhl makes sure he keeps his foot on the base. (Photo by Dale Dawn/NKyTribune)

Just as a CovCath team, with four of its six doubles for the game coming in that inning, batted around and then some in an inning that saw designated hitter Alek Yuskewich , pinch-hitter Parker McKinley , big-time prospect leadoff hitter Jackson Reardon and No. 2 hitter Joseph Magary drive the ball to the wall.

And for all but Yuskevich, leading off in the inning, they came with two outs as well as a second hit for Yuskevich that inning. And yeah, Roberts might have liked to see some of those fast balls not quite so hittable. “I’ll wake up a few times tonight thinking about that,” Roberts said with a shake of his head.

But as he was getting ready to hook up the drag screen to his cart to manicure the field as his players busily worked at keeping it immaculate in the postgame, you knew he would maybe still be able to smile when he did. It’s what lifer high school baseball coaches have to be able to do.

“It’s high school baseball, it’s hard,” Roberts said, “it’s a tough game on these kids, too. We had our chances.” And they did make a bit of a run, down 9-3 going into the bottom of the fifth, they added a couple of more runs.

But this one belonged to CovCath – and not just the hitters. Two pitchers deep in the bullpen with just 17 2/3 innings between them in six appearances – starter Michael Rozell and reliever Luke Pieper – battled all day against a solid Simon Kenton lineup.

“We were both out of arms,” Krumpelbeck said after playing three games in two days last weekend in the Bryan Stevenson Memorial Tournament. Simon Kenton starter Kaiden Robbins had just two starts and 13.0 innings pitched in a 1-1 season.

Throw in a couple of errors and it wasn’t a good inning to be on the mound. That’s why Roberts likes being in Northern Kentucky even if the Pioneers have been officially an Eight Region team the last couple of decades with most other teams down near Lexington and Louisville.

“We don’t have to travel far to play good teams,” Roberts said, “there’s plenty of good baseball up here. I’d like to think that we’re two pretty good teams.”

CovCath reliever Luke Pieper moved from first base to hold Simon Kenton at bay in the final four innings. (Photo by Dale Dawn/NKyTribune)

And yet there’s this: Northern Kentucky, after winning seven of the first 24 state championships in baseball with Newport winning the first two in 1940 and ’41 and Newport Catholic winning four more in 1946, ’50, ’54 and ’56, and then Holmes in 1963, CovCath’s 2002 win has been the only title in 61 years.

Not that Northern Kentucky hasn’t come close, as Roberts – and the fence on the Simon Kenton field — can both attest to with the Pioneers’ runner-up state finishes in 2014 and 2017 memorialized there. That was during a five-year run from 2014 to 2018 that saw five straight Northern Kentucky teams make the championship game only to lose.

“It’s hard to get to that game” and even harder to win it, Roberts said. “It’s very, very difficult. It’s baseball. Anybody can beat anybody. The best team doesn’t always win . . . I was talking about that with my team the other day.”

To review: Simon Kenton lost by 6-5 and 5-2. “We were playing good.” And Campbell County lost 1-0 in 2018. Highlands lost twice in 2015 and 2018. Four of those losses were to big Louisville schools, three to St. Xavier.

Krumpelbeck says he has “some theories as to why” but he doesn’t want to make anyone mad at him for speaking up. The first is “simply numbers . . . Louisville Trinity (like St. X) has 1,500 boys, we have 450.”

The former ace lefty pitcher for Cincinnati Elder and Xavier University says he knows how “having 2,000 boys” when he was there, made Elder dominant not only in Cincinnati but Ohio as well.

His second thought, after growing up on the West Side and playing baseball all day every day, he’ll “go by” the new baseball facilities here in the summer “and the kids aren’t playing.” Yes, “the travel teams play lots of games but they don’t practice,” Krumpelbeck said. And baseball is a sport you have to practice . . . every day.

And finally, he says, the three-games-in-three-days regional baseball format here doesn’t help. “I don’t think we get the best team down there.”

Which is what it’s all about in games like this. Working on not missing signals and not throwing those fat fastballs and getting the third out – and making it hard for the coach to sleep through the night.

And getting the best team down state.

SCORING SUMMARY
COVCATH 0 0 0 8 1 0 1 – 10 11 1
SIMON KENTON 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 – 5 7 3
WP: Rozell (1-0) LP: Robbins (1-2)
Leading hitters: CovCath: Reardon 3-4, 2 doubles; Magary 2-5, 2 doubles; Yuskewich 2-3, double; Pieper 2-4; McKinley double. Simon Kenton: D. Uhl 2-4, double; Cones double.

Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.

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