IHSBCA to induct McIntyre, Robinson, Allen, Carroll, Strayer in January 2022

By STEVE KRAH
http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Five men will be honored as part of the Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame class for 2021-2022.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic environment that existed in 2021, the induction ceremony did not take place as the IHSBCA State Clinic was held in a virtual format.
The 2021 and 2022 Hall of Fame classes will be honored at a joint ceremony at the IHSBCA state clinic on Jan. 15, 2022 at the Sheraton at Keystone Crossing in Indianapolis at 7 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased online at https://www.cognitoforms.com/Baseball3/_2022IHSBCAStateClinic.
The induction ceremony is a part of the three-day IHSBCA State Clinic and room reservation information is available at http://www.ihsbca.org.
The 2021 class includes one coach — Chris McIntyre of New Albany High School; and one contributor/umpire — James Robinson; along with the Veterans Committee nominee — Bernie Allen.
The 2022 class includes one coach — Steve Strayer of Crown Point High School and one player — Jamey Carroll.
McIntyre graduated from Jeffersonville High School where he played for Hall of Fame coach Don Poole. McIntyre received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Indiana University Southeast. He began his coaching career as an assistant coach at Clarksville High School under Hall of Famer Wayne Stock.
McIntyre has been the head coach at New Albany High School for 25 years where his teams have gone 533-218 during that time.
His teams have won five Hoosier Hills Conference titles,10 sectional championships and one regional title while reaching the Final Eight three times.
He is a four-time District Coach of the Year and five-time Conference Coach of the Year.
Mcintyre was the 2014 IHSBCA President, has served on numerous committees and has been an All-Star coach three times. He has coached 13 South All-Stars; over 40 players have gone on to play college baseball; had 3 players drafted and 2 players reach the major league level.
Chris and his wife Shannon have two sons — Tyler and Kevin. He currently teaches Mathematics at New Albany High School.
Robinson graduated from Harry E. Wood High School in Indianapolis and from Indiana University Kokomo.
He played one year of baseball in high school. He started umpiring high school baseball in 1980 and his career lasted for 35 years.
During his career, he worked 33 sectionals, 25 regionals, 14 semistates, and six State Championships.
He has umpired six IHSBCA North-South series and was voted IHSBCA Umpire of the Year five times.
In 1994, James was elected to the National Federation Baseball Rules Committee and served from 1995-1998.
In 2002 was named IHSAA/ NFOA Baseball Official of the Year and he was named as the National Federation Distinguished Official of the Year.
Robinson coached Babe Ruth and American Legion baseball for 10 years.
He has been a high school and college referee in football. He worked six years in Division II and seven years in the Mid-American Conference. He has also refereed the state basketball finals and the state football finals.
Later in his career, he became a replay official for the MAC and then moved to the Big Ten.
He was a replay official in the National Championship game in 2014 at the Rose Bowl between Florida State and Auburn.
James and his wife, Nada, deceased, has one daughter, Chiquita and one grandson, Kameron.
Allen, a native of East Liverpool, Ohio, played his collegiate baseball in West Lafayette for the Purdue University Boilermakers, where he was twice named team MVP.
A winner of six varsity letters, he was also the quarterback on the football team and was team MVP in 1960.
As starting QB in 1960, he guided the Boilers to wins over No. 12-ranked Notre Dam, Ohio State and No. 1 Minnesota (Associated Press and United Press Internatonal national champion); while also outdueling Georgia’s Fran Tarkenton in the annual Blue-Gray game.
In the spring of 1961, his collegiate career ended after being named an All-American shortstop. He then signed with the Minnesota Twins.
Allen played for the Twins, Washington Senators, New York Yankees and Montreal Expos.
At 6 foot and 185 pounds, Allen was a second baseman for most of his career; playing over 900 games at the position. By the 1971 season, he was splitting his time between second and third base.
On Opening Day, April 10, 1962, Allen made his debut for Minnesota at second base. He was put into a position vacated by Billy Martin a week earlier. Allen had one hit (a triple) in four at-bats that day.
His rookie performance led to a selection to the 1962 Topps All-Star Rookie Roster and finished third in Rookie of the Year voting, finishing behind Tom Tresh and Buck Rodgers.
Allen played five seasons for the Twins and was traded to the Senators with pitcher Camilo Pascual for pitcher Ron Kline. After five seasons in Washington, the Senators moved to Texas and traded him to the New York Yankees.
Allen played for New York in 1972, backing up second and third base. He played 17 games for the Yankees in 1973 before being purchased by Montreal. The Expos released him two months later.
After baseball, he was in the sporting goods business in West Palm Beach and the owner bought a baseball team that Allen helped coach with manager Felipe Alou. They played together with the Yankees and Expos.
That team won the Florida State League and then Alou went on to manage in the majors.
He then moved back to Ohio and worked for Ferro Corp for 17 years in East Liverpool, the pottery capital of the world.
He moved to Carmel in the mid 80’s and has never left. He and his wife play a lot of golf.
In 1999, he was selected in the Purdue Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame.
Allen has been married for a total of 51 years and has a son; three daughters; a step-son and step-daughter; 16 total grandchildren; and three great grandchidren.
Carroll is a 1992 graduate of Castle High School and was coached by Chuck Hawkins.
Carroll’s number was retired by Castle and he was a 1992 South All-Star. He played collegiately at the University of Evansville for Jim Brownlee. He graduated in 1996 and was an All-American that same year.
His name appears 27 times in the U of E baseball record book. In 2021, the number 23 was retired by the university.
Carroll was selected in the 14th round of the MLB Draft by the Expos. Some career numbers are: 16.6 WAR, 1,000 hits, 13 home runs, .272 batting average, 560 runs, 265 runs batted in, 74 stolen bases, .349 on-base percentage and .687 OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging).
His career spanned 12 years with the Expos/Washington Nationals, Colorado Rockies, Cleveland Indians, Los Angels Dodgers, Twins and Kansas City Royals.
Some highlights from his MLB career are scoring the last run in Expos history; leading NL 2B in fielding percentage in 2006; and in 2007 he scored Matt Holliday with a sacrifice fly to win the NL Wild Card game.
Carroll is recently retired from the Pittsburgh Pirates where he spent four years as a Special Assistant and three years as Defensive Coordinator. He is his wife Kim have 13-year-old twins — Cole and Mackenzie.
Strayer attended Prairie Heights High school and received his bachelor’s degree from Manchester College and master’s degree from Indiana University Northwest. His teams have won 641 games with only 236 losses; 15 conference titles; 14 sectional championships; and nine regional crowns.
He has coached 13 Indiana All-Stars. 64 players have gone on to play college baseball (23 Division I).
Strayer has been named District Coach of the Year in 1996, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, and 2019.
He began his coaching career at Boone Grove High School and won 223 games in 10 seasons, along with seven Porter County championships.
He is currently the head coach at Crown Point High School and is beginning his 20th season as coach of the Bulldogs.
His CP teams have won 418 games and numerous sectional and regional titles to go along with eight Duneland Athletic Conference titles.
He served as IHSBCA President during this time; and was a 2005 and 2021 North All-Star coach.
Strayer teaches Mathematics at Crown Point High School. He resides in Crown Point with love of his life Jennifer and beautiful daughter Charlotte.

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Cy Young, 1980 Phillies latest in author Freedman’s long list of books

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Prolific author Lew Freedman has had two titles released during the summer of 2020.

The common thread is baseball. The subjects and the way he researched the books are very different.

“Phillies 1980!: Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Pete Rose and Philadelphia’s First World Series Championship (Sports Publishing)” came out in June and “Cy Young: The Baseball Life and Career (McFarland Books)” hit the market in August.

Freedman, a newspaperman for 50 years living in Columbus, Ind., serving as sports editor of the Seymour (Ind.) Tribune, has authored or co-authored about 110 books in the past three decades — about 60 on sports with two-thirds of them being on baseball. 

He lived the Phillies story as a Philadelphia Inquirer staffer in 1980 assigned to write the sidebar on World Series MVP and future Hall of Famer Schmidt. The journalist was able to draw from what he witnessed at the time plus research. Philadelphia topped the Kansas City Royals in six games as Schmidt hit .381 (8-of-21) with two home runs, seven runs batted in and six runs score. 

The seed that grew into the Cy Young book was decades in the making.

“I had it in my head for years and years and years — almost 30 years,” says Freedman. “I was getting more and more interested in baseball history.”

Even though he was serving as sports editor at the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News at the time, Freedman made a trip to the research library at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., and gathered information on the man with 511 career pitching victories — far more than anyone in big league annals and wrote a column about Denton True Young — first known as Cyclone for clobbering a wooden fence with his pitches and then Cy.

“Nobody will ever come close,” says Freedman of durable right-hander Young’s win total. “There have been some Cy Young books, but not a lot. 

“This is the first time in 20 years there’s been a new look at Cy Young.”

With the advantage of being a better writer and researcher since writing “Dangerous Steps: Vernon Tejas And The Solo Winter Ascent Of Mount McMcKinley (Stackpole Books)” in 1990, Freedman went head-long into more Young research.

“(Cy Young is an) old story, but he never gets old,” says Freedman. “I wanted to get Cy Young’s voice as much as possible and get into what kind of guy he was.

“He was not a controversial guy. He did not get into trouble. He didn’t keep late hours. He didn’t party.”

Except for his time on a baseball field, Young spent his time as a farmer in northeast Ohio. 

Since Young’s 22-year-old career spans from 1890 to 1911, finding the pitcher’s voice was not easy.

“When Cy Young was playing sportswriters did not go to the locker room right after the game and get quotes,” says Freedman. The scribes were focused on getting play-by-play details into their stories and then meeting deadlines and often racing for the train station for the team’s next game. “Contemporaneous reports are missing.”

Luckily for Freedman and other baseball researchers, Young lived to be 88 and shared his thoughts freely for decades after the end of his career.

“His brains were picked about his highlights,” says Freedman. “That stuff was golden material for a guy like me.”

Young spent much of his Hall of Fame career with two primary catchers — Chief Zimmer and Lou Criger. The latter is an Elkhart, Ind., native who was with Young in Cleveland, St. Louis and Boston from 1896 to 1908.

The Cy Young Award was first presented to the top pitcher in Major League Baseball in 1956 in honor of a man who not only won 94 more games than the second man on the list (Hall of Famer Walter Johnson), but tossed an astounding 7,356 innings with 29,565 batters faced and 749 complete games. Both the American and National leagues have handed out the Cy Young Award since 1967.

“I love baseball history,” says Freedman. “I learn something all the time when I do the research.

“I was very happy when I held the Cy Young book in my hand.”

Freedman’s newspaper career started when he was in high school in the Boston suburb of Newton, Mass.

He was with the Inquirer when an Alaskan vacation turned into 17 years as a sports editor there. He later was on the staff at the Chicago Tribune and Florida Times-Union and was sports editor at The Republic in Columbus, Ind. He has won more than 250 journalism awards.

Along the way, Freedman kept researching and writing books. There are many related to Alaska, even one that ties baseball to the remote 49th state.

One of his early baseball works is “Hard-Luck Harvey Haddix and the Greatest Game Ever Lost (McFarland Books).” The book chronicles the story of the Pittsburgh Pirates 12 perfect innings against the Milwaukee Braves in 1959 only to lose the perfecto, no-hitter and the game in the 13th.

In recent years, Freedman has seen the publishing of “Red Sox Legends: Pivotal Moments, Players & Personalities (Blue River Press)” in 2019, “Warren Spahn: A Biography of the Legendary Lefty (Sports Publishing)” in 2018 and “Connie Mack’s First Dynasty: The Philadelphia Athletics, 1910-1914 (McFarland Books)” in 2017.

Freedman, who has been featured multiple times on the Baseball by the Book Podcast hosted by Jeremy McGuire, has also contributed books on the Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians‘, Cincinnati Reds, New York Yankees and more.

“Once I moved to Chicago, it was easier to write sports books,” says Freedman, who has created many titles on the Chicago Bears. He’s also written about basketball, hockey, auto racing, boxing, pro wrestling and even competitive lumber-jacking.

“As long as I can come up with a great topic in my mind and (a book publisher) also thinks it’s a good idea,” says Freedman.

When his books come out is not entirely up to Freedman. Done and awaiting editor’s approval is a something tentatively called “1930: When Everybody Was Babe Ruth.”

To Freedman, 1930 was the “Year of the Hitter” the way 1968 is referred to as the “Year of the Pitcher.”

“Hitting went crazy and pitching was atrocious,” says Freedman. “That year the seams were raised on the ball. Pitchers could not control it. (Hitters) had the years of their lives.

“After that, they changed the rules so it didn’t happen again.”

Lefty-swinging outfielder George “Showboat” Fisher played four major league seasons — hitting .261 in 1923, .220 in 1924 and .182 in 1931. His 1930 mark was .374 as a reserve for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Fisher lived to 95.

“He got to talk about (the 1930 season) for the rest of his life,” says Freedman, who notes that ’30 was the year of the National League’s last .400 hitter (Hall of Fame first baseman Bill Terry of the New York Giants at .401).

All eight position players in the St. Louis Cardinals regular starting lineup hit .300, including outfielder George Watkins at .373. 

It was hoped that the Phillies book would come out as part of a 40th-year anniversary and a celebration was planned during spring training in Clearwater, Fla.

Then along came the COVID-19 pandemic and that changed everything about 2020. 

On March 16, Freedman was on his way home from a western trip to cover rodeo (he once spent three months in Wyoming researching a book on rodeo). He literally had businesses shutting down behind him as he drove back toward southern Indiana. 

One day he ate in a restaurant, the next day they were putting chairs on top of tables at a truck stop.

More recently, Freedman has been able to cover high school football for his paper and has been contemplating his next baseball book project.

First baseman Johnny Mize was a star for the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Giants and New York Yankees in the late 1930’s through early 1950’s.

“He’s been under-covered,” says Freedman of the Hall of Fame. 

He’s a Hall of Famer. “He was overshadowed with the Yankees (teammates included Hall of Famers Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Phil Rizzuto plus Hank Bauer and Billy Martin). “He was a tremendous player.”

Lew Freedman has authored or co-authored around 110 books since 1990. Around 60 of those titles have been on sports. The 50-year newspaperman is now sports editor at the Seymour (Ind.) Tribune. He has won more than 250 journalism awards.

Prolific author Lew Freedman had two books come out this summer — “Phillies 1980!: Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Pete Rose and Philadelphia’s First World Series Championship (Sports Publishing)” and “Cy Young: The Baseball Life and Career (McFarland Books).” He has authored or co-authored about 110 books in the past 30 years. Of that number, about 40 are on baseball. He lives in Columbus, Ind., and is sports editor at the Seymour (Ind.) Tribune.

Teachers Scott, Curtis make history come alive for students through baseball

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Educators who value history and baseball have combined the two and stirred excitement about both subjects in their students.

Matt Scott is teaching a baseball history course this spring at Clinton Prairie Junior/Senior High School in Frankfort, Ind. He got the inspiration for the class a few years ago while attending a social studies technology conference in Lafayette. There he learned Shawn Curtis was teaching baseball history at North White Midde/High School in Monon, Ind.

Curtis has led a similar course at Connersville (Ind.) High School and now incorporates the diamond game into his social studies classes at Carmel (Ind.) High School.

“We go over time period and see how baseball is interwoven,” says Scott. “Some students may have a general knowledge, but don’t know history.

“We see what baseball has brought to the history of the United States.”

Using the Ken Burns’ “Baseball” series — now streaming free online by PBS during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic that has schools doing eLearning rather than in-person classes — Scott leads a semester-long project-based elective course.

Right now, his students are on “Inning 4 — A National Heirloom (1920-1930).”

Using MySimpleShow, pupils will create short videos about one of the World Series during the period when the “U.S. was coming out of World War I and getting back on its feet.”

Many have asked for 1927 with “Murderer’s Row” lineup that featured Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and hot dogs started to be a staple at the ballpark.

“It will be interesting to see how different kids perceive (the Series),” says Scott. “Kids know Babe Ruth, but don’t know Christy Mathewson or Honus Wagner.

“It brings me joy to put a name with a face and how that person is important.”

Some of Scott’s students have used Book Creator to craft a flip book that comes from their research. Other tools include Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Publisher. Students have produced newscasts, podcasts and more.

Skype video conferencing allows for guest speakers. The Athletic senior writer C. Trent Rosecrans told about his baseball experiences, including those in Japan.

“It’s a big party over there,” says Scott of the atmosphere at a baseball game in the Land of the Rising Sun. “The way it is during the playoffs here is an average game in Japan.”

Attendees of Scott’s baseball history class have studied the contributions of people of color from Native Americans to Cubans to Latinos to the Negro Leagues.

Indianapolis native Oscar Charleston was one of the stars of the Negro Leagues, which celebrates its 100th year in 2020. Rube Foster helped establish the Negro National League in 1920 in Kansas City and that city is now the sight of the Negro League Baseball Museum.

The study goes from the Civil War to the civil rights movement.

“Some people don’t understand how far back it goes,” says Scott.

Zoom has been the way Scott — and so many other teachers including Curtis — have simultaneously communicated with students.

In Scott’s class, students have learned about common misconception that Civil War hero Abner Doubleday was the inventor of baseball.

Alexander Cartwright, who came up with the scorecard and help formalize a set of rules, is considered something of a modern-day inventor.

“But there’s no one person who should get the ‘Father of Baseball’ label,” says Scott.

A few years ago, Scott and his class took a field trip to see the Indianapolis Indians where they gained more knowledge about the heritage of that franchise plus baseball in Indiana’s capitol.

Scott is also head baseball coach at Clinton Prairie. With in-person classes ending because of COVID-19, the Indiana High School Athletic Association also put an end to spring sports.

“I’m bummed,” says Scott. “Not being able to play this year kind of breaks my heart.”

With three seniors and nine juniors back from a 2019 team that went 2019, the Gophers were looking to “do some damage” in 2020.

Curtis grew up in Wyoming, but rooted for the New York Yankees since his grandfather — Edwin Curtis — had been offered a chance to play in their system as well as that of the St. Louis Cardinals back in the 1930’s. When the expansion Colorado Rockies came along, Robert Curtis — Shawn’s father — purchased season tickets.

“I’m a huge baseball fan,” says Curtis. “(Baseball) is really the history of America.

“Baseball is the constant theme of things. I will find ways to tie baseball in.”

Curtis, who also used the Ken Burns documentary to frame some of his teaching, says that as cities grew, people needed recreation and baseball parks offered an escape.

“We see how baseball plays into World War II,” says Curtis. “We see how baseball plays into the Spanish Flu (1918 Pandemic).”

Over the years, Curtis has taken students to Anderson, Ind., to meet Carl Erskine, a Brooklyn Dodgers teammate of Jackie Robinson and a baseball ambassador.

Skype or in-person class guests have included civil rights leader John Lewis, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy and Harrison High School graduate and former minor leaguer Josh Loggins and many more.

“(Speakers) really bring history alive,” says Curtis. “Hearing from the people who made news in more impactful than a book.”

As a way of making history come alive for his students, Curtis launched The 1988 Project.

While teaching about that year, he contacted former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, who was more than willing to talk electronically with his class.

“We planned for 40 minutes and he went on for probably two hours,” says Curtis. “The kids had a blast.”

The teacher’s aim was for his students to become historians and use 1988 as the focal point.

“We would take a year in the life of America and just pull it apart,” says Curtis. “It was transitional year between the old world and the new world.

“There were so many human interest. Tom Hanks made ‘Big.’ ‘Batman’ was filmed that year. There were magazine covers talking about the Internet coming.”

Students would critique movies and got to chat with online guests like pop star Debbie Gibson, actor Lou Diamond Phillips, The Cosby Show kid Malcom-Jamal Warner, Saturday Night Live cast member Joe Piscopo and “Miracle on Ice” hockey hero Mike Eruzione.

Of course, 1988 is also known for Kirk Gibson hobbling to the plate at Dodger Stadium and homering off Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the World Series.

Independent of his teaching, Curtis has been working with the Negro League Baseball Museum — where Bob Kendrick is the president — and highlighting the history of black baseball in Indianapolis.

The best ballplayer of all-time?

“It’s definitely (Negro Leaguer) Josh Gibson,” says Curtis, who notes that old Bush Stadium in Indianapolis was site of a Negro League World Series game featuring Baseball Hall of Famer Gibson and the Homestead Grays in 1943.

Joe Posnanski, who wrote “The Soul of Baseball: A Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America,” is another former guest in a Curtis-taught class. Former Negro Leaguer player and Kansas City Monarchs manager Buck O’Neil was a central figure on the Ken Burns “Baseball” series.

This summer, the Curtis family is planning a visit to Fenway Park in Boston.

The Curtis family has also spent vacations going to historic baseball sites, including League Park in Cleveland, the former site of the Polo Grounds in New York and the boyhood home of Mickey Mantle in Oklahoma (Mantle is the favorite player of Robert Curtis) and many graves.

Curtis has produced short videos through 1945 for the World Series, Negro League World Series and All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

A Shawn Curtis video on the 1903 World Series.

A Shawn Curtis video on the 1945 World Series.

A Shawn Curtis video on the 1943 Negro League World Series.

A Shawn Curtis video on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

Carl Erskine came to visit the baseball history class taught by Shawn Curtis when Curtis was at North White High School in Monon, Ind.

Author Joe Posnanski talks via Skype to a class taught by history teacher Shawn Curtis. Posnanski has written on many topics, including baseball.

History teacher Shawn Curtis poses with the statue of his favorite player, Josh Gibson, at the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo.

The Curtis family enjoys spending time at the Negro League Museum in Kansas City, Mo.

Among historical baseball sites visited by the Curtis family is League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

History teacher Shawn Curtis was able to get on the field at historic League Park in Cleveland, Ohio, during a family trip.

Buck O’Neil is buried in Kansas City, Mo. The former Negro League player and manager’s grave is one of several baseball sites visited by Shawn Curtis and family.

Billy Martin is buried in Hawthorne, N.Y. The big league player and manager’s grave is one of several baseball sites visited by Shawn Curtis and family.

Babe Ruth is buried in Hawthorne, N.Y. The baseball legend’s grave is one of several baseball sites visited by Shawn Curtis and family.

Lou Gehrig is buried in Valhalla, N.Y. The baseball legend’s grave is one of several baseball sites visited by Shawn Curtis and family.

Mel Ott is buried in New Orleans. The Hall of Famer’s grave is one of several baseball sites visited by Shawn Curtis and family.

Mickey Mantle is buried in Dallas, Texas. The Hall of Famer’s grave is one of several baseball sites visited by Shawn Curtis and family.

Josh Gibson is buried in Pittsburgh, Pa. The Negro League legend’s grave is one of several baseball sites visited by Shawn Curtis and family.

The Clinton Prairie High School baseball history class of Matt Scott visits via Skype with baseball writer C. Trent Rosecrans. Scott is also head baseball coach at the school.

 

Alum Harpring has led Rushville Lions baseball program since 2013 season

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Baseball is important at Rushville (Ind.) Consolidated High School and the the place where the Lions roam is getting a facelift.

The school took over the diamond once run by the Rush County Council of Clubs and facility is going through some major renovation.

New fences and dugouts are expected for the 2019 season. The field already has lights.

“The kids are really excited about it and that’s what it’s about,” says Kyle Harpring, a 1998 Rushville graduate who is heading into his seventh season as Lions head coach. “We’re hoping with the upgrades we’ll get a chance to host a sectional.”

Rushville is in an IHSAA Class 3A sectional grouping with Batesville, Franklin County, Greensburg, Lawrenceburg, Madison Consolidated and South Dearborn. The Lions last won a sectional title in 1999.

A member of the Eastern Indiana Athletic Conference (with Batesville, Connersville, East Central, Franklin County, Greensburg, Lawrenceburg and South Dearborn) since 2013 after years in the Hoosier Heritage Conference, Rushville is coming off a 2018 season where it went 15-10 overall and 7-7 in the conference, which was won by Franklin County.

The EIAC determines its champion with home-and-home series on Mondays and Thursdays.

Among Rushville’s non-conference opponents are 3A’s New Castle, 2A’s Centerville, Hagerstown, Shenandoah and Triton Central and 1A’s Edinburgh and North Decatur.

Mason Springman (.487), Aaron Duncan (.360) and Cameron Craig (.348) were among the top hitters and three-year ace Tyler Wilson (3-4 in 11 appearances), Tyce Carroll (6-0) and Duncan (3-3) the top pitchers in 2018 and are expected to be part of the 10-member senior class in 2019.

Harpring says he expects to have about 25 players for varsity and junior varsity squads with about the same number in the middle school program.

Former Rushville left-hander Brad Busald pitched at Lincoln Trail College in Robinson Ill., in 2017 then transferred to Indiana University.

Harpring’s coaching staff features Eric Harpring, Jason Pavey and Jordan Hoeing at the high school level with Mark Mathews and Billy Martin tending to the middle schoolers.

Eric Harpring, who was a pitcher and outfielder at Huntington University, is Kyle’s brother.

“Eric brings a lot of knowledge to the table,” says Kyle Harpring. “I enjoy being able to share experiences with him.”

The Lions have produced five Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association North/South All-Star Series players and there are related — Brian Harpring (1989), Eric Harpring (2006) and Caleb Fenimore (2010). Brian is an uncle and Caleb a second cousin to Kyle and Eric.

Jeremy Vale (1993) and Jarod Springman (1999) are the Lions’ other former All-Stars.

Pavey and Hoeing are also Rushville graduate. Hoeing played with Fenimore and Indiana Purdue-Fort Wayne.

Billy Martin is the son of former Rushville Consolidated and Robert L. Jenkins American Legion coach Eric Martin and the brother of Wabash College head coach Jake Martin.

Kyle Harpring played for head coach Jim Bush in high school, Keith Perin in high school and Legion baseball and Eric Martin in Legion ball.

“I was really lucky,” says Kyle Harpring. “I got to play for some really invested baseball guys.

“They were good about instilling the importance of being fundamentally sound, playing hard all the time and knowing the focus you have to have as your progress up the levels. You can’t take plays off.”

Harpring grew up in what he calls a baseball family.

Kyle is the oldest of Mark and Karen Harpring’s three sons. Second son Scott is two years younger than Kyle. Eric was eight grades behind Kyle in school.

After graduating from Franklin College (2003), where he did not play baseball, Kyle Harpring went into teaching. His first job was at Lawrenceburg, where he was an assistant to Tigers head coach Joe Vogelesang and on the same staff with current Lawrenceburg head coach Nick Tremain.

“Joe was phenomenal to coach with,” says Harpring of Vogelgesang. “I was a middle infielder. Joe pitched professionally (in the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays systems). I learned an awful lot about pitching from Joe.

“He’s very intense and cares a lot about the kids and the game and playing it the right way.”

Harpring taught middle school for 10 years and now instructs fourth graders at Rushville Elementary East.

A basketball coach while still in college, Harpring has coached that sport from seventh grade through varsity assistant with roles at Rushville, Lawrenceburg, Shelbyville and Triton Central.

Kyle and Ashley Harpring have been married for 10 years. The couple has three children — sons Hudson (7) and Micah (5) and daughter Ella (2). Micah was the “sectional baby” born the night of a first-round game against South Dearborn.

Kyle Harpring, a 1998 Rushville (Ind.) Consolidated High School graduate, is heading into his seventh season as the Lions head baseball coach in 2019.