Former player, assistant Ulery now guiding Peru baseball

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

Building team chemistry is among the priorities for Josh Ulery as he takes over as head baseball coach at his alma mater — Peru (Ind.) High School.
Hired in the fall to lead the Tigers program, the 1999 Peru graduate graduate has also been stressing fundamentals, conditioning and offensive approach while assessing his team’s strengths and weaknesses during IHSAA Limited Contact Period activities.
“We want to hit the fastball and be aggressive in the (batter’s) box,” says Ulery of his hitters. “We want to swing hard but have a controllable swing.”
This week, players were in the gym for Tuesday hitting. Fielding practice is slated for Saturday.
Ulery wants his team — which has most varsity players back from 2022 — to be “tip-top defensively.”
Thanks to moving to a new shift and role for the Peru Police Department (he went into police work at 25 and is now a detective) Ulrey is able to coach baseball in an expanded capacity. In the past he’s been a paid assistant and last year was a volunteer for Chuck Brimbury, who was his head coach when he was a standout right-handed pitcher/first baseman for the Tigers and offered a baseball scholarship to Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne (which he did not pursue).
“A lot of my coaching comes through Chuck Brimbury,” says Ulrey.
A four-year varsity performer, Ulrey was with Dick Keller for the first two years and Brimbury the next two. Peru went 22-5 in 1999. With many of that team returning in 2000, the Tigers won their only IHSAA Class 3A regional title.
With an enrollment around 660, Peru is the largest school Three Rivers Conference (which also includes Maconaquah, Manchester, Northfield, North Miami, Rochester, Southwood, Tipppecanoe Valley, Wabash and Whitko).
TRC teams see each other once during conference play.
Peru is slated to begin the regular season April 7 against Bluffton in the Howard County Invitational. The slate also features at April 29 home doubleheader against South Bend Saint Joseph, a May 6 round robin at Western at May 13 Miami County Classic.
The Tigers are part of an IHSAA Class 3A sectional grouping in 2023 with Bellmont, Maconaquah, Mississinewa, Norwell and Oak Hill. Peru has won five sectional titles — the last in 2018.
Lief Astrup graduated in 2022. Returnees include several players who Ulery says have college baseball aspirations — Class of 2023’s Logan Gatliff and Fox Huppenthal, 2024’s Ian Potts, Matthew Roettger and Jackson Rogers and 2025’s Gavin Eldridge.
“We have an amazing freshman class,” says Ulery, who could see as many as 17 representing the Class of 2026. “Those guys are really competitive. I can image a few pushing for varsity positions.
“It should be an exciting and motivated year.”
There have been 36 players at various open fields and conditioning. Ulery says he expects to keep up to 28 in the spring.
His varsity assistants are Rob Hileman, Chris Beauchamp, Ron Potts, Adam Butt and Gary Loe with the varsity. Hillman works with hitters and fielders and coaches third base. Beauchamp is assistant hitting/outfielders coach. Potts is in charge of drill work. Butt and Loe do scorebook work for varsity and junior varsity.
Jacob Loftus is head JV/catching coach. Jody Beauchamp (brother of Chris) is program pitching/first baseman coach and JV assistant. Ron Whitney is a JV assistant and also works with outfielders.
Peru fields a junior high team of seventh and eighth graders that plays about a dozen contests in the spring. Jeff Dicken is the head coach. His assistant is Cody Hiles. Volunteers are Andre Ambrose and Joe Bockover.
Former head coach Mike Stewart is the public address announcer for Peru baseball. Bob DeWire coordinates field maintenance at Tiger Field.
Ulery says there is talk about a new field being put in — with turf and new lights — in 2024. But those details have not been set.
Josh and wife Becky (formerly Mannies) have been married for 17 years. The couple has three children (a girl and two boys) — junior Jordyn, eighth graders Lukas and kindergartener Blake. Jordyn Ulery is a varsity cheerleader. Her mother is Peru’s varsity cheer coach.

Josh Ulery.

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Peru’s Beauchamp eager to get back to pitching in Phillies system

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Cam Beauchamp was in Clearwater, Fla., last spring, getting ready for what was going to be his first full season of professional baseball.

The left-handed pitcher had been selected in the 36th round of the 2019 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft by the Philadelphia Phillies out of Indiana University and pitched in five games. The first — on Aug. 5 — he pitched the eighth inning as five Gulf Coast Phillies East hurlers combined on a no-hitter.

“It was a super good experience,” says Beauchamp. “The players were friendly. 

“They welcomed me with open arms.”

Pitching four more times through Aug. 29, the southpaw went 0-0 with a 1.23 earned run average. In 7 1/3 innings, he struck out five and walked two. He threw 36 of 47 pitches for strikes.

Then came spring training for 2020.

Beauchamp, a 6-foot-2, 221-pounder, was in camp and one day away from the first exhibition game when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and things were shut down.

After close to two weeks, he returned home to Peru, Ind., and found a job while trying to stay sharp for baseball.

When he’s not working at Rock Hollow Golf Club in Peru, Beauchamp finds a partner and plays catch at Peru High School, where he graduated in 2016 and Chuck Brimbury is in his second stint as head coach. Or he will throw his weight PlyoCare Balls into a concrete wall at home.

A four-time all-Three Rivers Conference selection at Peru, Beauchamp went 16-6 on the mound with 244 strikeouts in 159 1/3 innings during his Tigers career. He was 5-1 with 95 strikeouts and 13 walks in 44 1/3 innings as a senior. As a hitter, his career mark was .389 with 21 home runs and 94 RBIs.

Beauchamp pitched three seasons at Indiana (2017-19) — two for former Hoosiers head coach Chris Lemonis and former IU pitching coach Kyle Bunn and one for current head coach Jeff Mercer and current pitching coach Justin Parker.

In 41 mound appearances (27 in relief), Beauchamp went 5-3 with a 3.88 earned run average. In 88 2/3 innings, he struck out 70 and walked 57. 

Beauchamp pitched in nine games (five starts) in 2019 with a 3.00 ERA. In 15 innings, he fanned 14 and walked 14.

Beauchamp took a liking to Lemonis for the way he talked to him and his parents — Jody and Robin.

“He’s a real great guy,” says Beauchamp of Lemonis. “I could talk baseball with him all day.”

Beauchamp was impressed by Bunn’s knowledge of the game and then found out he was also a fisherman and hunter like himself.

“That seals the deal even more,” says Beauchamp, who took his first deer last year in southern Indiana and has landed a largemouth bass around six pounds in a local pond and a 45-pound baby Tarpon on a charter boat in Florida.

Beauchamp got a chance to see how Mercer and Parker operate and sees that they are using even more technology in assessing players than when he was with the program.

“They’re definitely the new wave of coaching that’s going across the United States,” says Beauchamp of Mercer and Parker. “They definitely know baseball.”

One year from a Sports Marketing & Management degree, Beauchamp went into pro baseball.

During his time away from the Phillies, the organization has been sending him workouts through a phone app and every two weeks he gets an email about throwing program recommendations.

Beauchamp, who turned 22 in March, was throwing his four-seam fastball at 91 to 93 mph and occasionally touching 94. 

“I feel I can get up to that 96/97 range,” says Beauchamp, who has also mixed in a two-seamer, 12-to-6 curveball and “circle” change-up. Recently, he’s been tinkering with a cutter.

“It typically has the same amount of break as the two-seam and goes the opposite way,” says Beauchamp, who lets his two-seamer run in on a left-handed batter and away from a righty. This is all done from a high three-quarter arm slot.

It’s an old saying that left-handers always have movement with their pitches.

Beauchamp buys into that theory.

“I can’t put my hat on straight,” says Beauchamp. “I can’t put my belt on straight.

“I can’t throw a ball straight. It always moves.”

Beauchamp was born and raised in Peru. He played in what is now known as the Peru Cal Ripken League until he was 12. First there was the Marlins in T-ball. Later, the Indians in Junior Farm (coach pitch) and the Rockies in Major League.

“Those were the sweetest jerseys ever,” says Beauchamp, who then played for Cam Brannock and Justin Brannock with the Summit City Sluggers travel ball organization through 17U.

Cam comes from a baseball-loving family. Uncle Chris Beauchamp is a Slugger board member and former Wabash (Ind.) High School assistant coach. Cousin Shea Beauchamp, son of Chris, played at Huntington (Ind.) University and is now a Foresters assistant coach.

Jody Beauchamp works as a quality checker at Haynes International in Kokomo.

Robin Beauchamp is a director of nursing consultant for Golden Living Centers. 

Cam is an only child. What’s that like?

“That’s a loaded question,” says Beauchamp.

Cam Beauchamp, a Peru (Ind.) High School graduate, pitched three baseball seasons at Indiana University (2017-19) and was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2019. He is a left-hander. (Indiana University Photo)