Winning becomes contagious for Alabaugh, Parke Heritage Wolves

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Parke Heritage High School in Rockville, Ind., fielded its second baseball team in 2021.

The Wolves debuted in 2019, missed the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic and came back this spring. 

On Memorial Day, Parke Heritage won its first sectional championship, reigning at Sectional 44 hosted by Southmont. Tournament wins came against South Putnam Wednesday May 26 as well as Southmont and North Putnam both on Monday, May 31.

Down 3-2 against Southmont with six outs to go, the Wolves scored six runs in the sixth inning for an 8-3 triumph prior to an 11-1 title game win against North Putnam.

Parke Heritage heads to the IHSAA Class 2A Cascade Regional Saturday, June 5 with a 15-10 record after a 5-9 start.

“It’s been an up-and-down ride,” says first-year Wolves head coach Ron Alabaugh. “We lost last year with the pandemic and our basketball team went to the (2020-21) State Finals.

“Basketball players are key parts of the baseball program.”

These hoopsters, which finished as 2A state runners-up to Fort Wayne Blackhawk Christian, played catch-up while knocking the baseball rust off and getting their arms in shape at the beginning of the season.

“It took a little while to get things going,” says Alabaugh. “But they stuck with it and worked hard. It’s paying off for us late in the season.

“Winning is just as contagious as losing. At a certain part of a season we expected to lose. We had to work on that frame of mind and turn it around. It was rough on the boys, but we were able to do it.”

By the close of the regular slate, the Wolves were down to 15 players in the program. Two seniors — Joey Bouffard and Connor Davis — have been drawing interest from college baseball programs.

In recent years, Rockville/Parke Heritage sent Kaleb Huxford (Maryville University in St. Louis), Dalton Laney (Indiana State) and Hunter Michalic (Manchester University in North Manchester, Ind.) to college diamonds. Logan White is on the football team at Franklin (Ind.) College).

Parke Heritage (a consolidation of Rockville and Turkey Run with an enrollment around 350) is a member of the Wabash River Conference (with Attica, Covington, Fountain Central, North Vermillion, Riverton Parke, 2021 champion Seeger and South Vermillion).

WRC teams played each other twice — sometimes in home-and-away weekday series and sometimes in Saturday doubleheaders. 

Regular-season wins came against Covington (twice), Attica (twice), North Putnam, North Vermillion (twice), Fountain Central (twice), Sullivan, Greencastle and South Newton.

Parke Heritage plays at a facility named for former Rockville athletic director Stan Gideon, who died in 2006.

The Wolves count local youth leagues, travel teams and a junior high team as part of its feeder program. The high school took over the old Rockville High building. Parke Heritage Middle School is in the structure that once housed Turkey Run in Marshall, Ind.

Rockville won 12 sectional titles, five regionals, two semistates and was 1A state runners-up in 2014 and 1A state champions in 2015. Turkey Run won four sectionals.

Alabaugh was an assistant at Rockville to Bob Kyle for the 2008-13 and 2016-19 seasons.

This spring, Alabaugh’s staff includes Mark Harper and Jarred Russell.

His father — Ron Alabaugh — attends every game. He played many years of semipro baseball for the old Blanford Cardinals as a teammate of Kyle. Young Ron was the batboy and later played on the same field as a member of the Clinton American Legion Post 140 team.

“My mother (Beverly) walked away with the (sectional) game ball last night,” says Alabaugh. “She put up with 50-some years of my baseball. That’s the least I could do for her.”

A 1987 graduate of South Vermillion High School in Clinton, Ind., Alabaugh played for Tim Terry near the beginning of Terry’s Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame career.

Terry’s longevity in establishing a successful program is a marvel to Alabaugh, who counts winning a sectional title in his sophomore year among his favorite baseball memories.

The Wildcats beat Montezuma and Rosedale to win the 1985 South Vermillion Sectional and lost to Terre Haute South Vigo featuring Kyle Kraemer in the semifinals of the Terre North Regional semifinals.

Alabaugh has two degrees from Indiana State University. After nearly two decades in the car business — he had his own Chevrolet dealership — he decided to go back to college and at 43 he was ready to be an educator. He started at North Montgomery, where he was also an assistant girls basketball coach on the staff of Ryan Nuppnau.

The 2020-21 year is his sixth at Rockville/Parke Heritage. He is a Social Studies teacher, instructing classes in history, psychology and economics.

Ron and wife Annie Alabaugh have a married son named Jordan (his bride is Nikki). Jordan Alabaugh was a golfer at South Vermillion.

Parke Heritage baseball coaches (from left): assistants Mark Harper, Jarrett Russell and head coach Ron Alabaugh.

Parke Heritage won the 2021 IHSAA Class 2A Souhmont Sectional baseball title.

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Lopez, North Vermillion baseball looking to feed off football, basketball success

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Success in one sport can lead to another.

That’s is the hope for baseball at North Vermillion Junior-Senior High School in Cayuga, Ind., after the school saw its football team make it to the state championship game last fall and its boys basketball team advance to the regional championship contest this winter.

Six starters on the football squad that finished as IHSAA Class 1A state runners-up are returning starters for the Falcons in baseball — senior two-way lineman/right fielder Derek Foncannon, junior quarterback/shortstop Brennan Ellis, junior running back/center fielder Wyatt Reynolds, junior center/catcher Kale Flynn, junior offensive tackle/inside linebacker/third baseman Josh Little, and junior wide receiver/left fielder Lucas Cook.

The Falcons’ top two pitchers — senior right-hander Alex Tallman and junior righty Luke Osborn — are also back for 2019.

Hank Lopez, who is defensive coordinator in football and the father of Derek Foncannon (a Vincennes, Ind., University baseball commit), returns for his fourth season as North Vermillion’s head baseball coach. His assistant coaches are Maris Clark and Paul Hamilton.

“We want to be mentally tough,” says Lopez of his team’s core values. “They’ve put in some adverse situations in practice that hopefully make the games a little easier.

“We have high expectations.”

Lopez says there are usually 18 or 19 players in the program for varsity and junior varsity teams. This year it should be 15. The Falcons have a large junior class, but just one sophomore.

Feeding the high school program is a seventh and eighth grade junior high club coordinated by Lopez which plays 12 to 14 games in the spring.

A North Vermillion Pony League squad for grades 7-10 plays about that many games plus an end-of-season tournament in the summer.

North Vermillion (enrollment around 240) is a member of the Wabash River Conference (with Attica, Covington, Fountain Central, Parke Heritage, Riverton Parke, Seeger and South Vermillion).

WRC teams meet once each twice to determine the conference champion, either in weekday home-and-home series or Saturday doubleheaders.

The Falcons are scheduled to open the season March 28 in a non-conference game against Eastern (Pekin) at Vincennes University.

North Vermillion is slated to meet Peru May 4 at Wabash College in Crawfordsville.

Among other non-conference foes are North Central (Farmersburg), Shakamak and West Vigo along with Illinois teams Bismarck-Henning, Georgetown-Ridge Farm/Chrisman and Westville. Cayuga is less than five miles from the Indiana-Illinois state line.

The Falcons are part of an IHSAA Class 1A sectional grouping with Attica, Covington, Parke Heritage (consolidation of Rockville and Turkey Run) and Riverton Parke. North Vermillion has won five sectional crowns — the last in 1997.

NV home games on-campus. Lopez says there has been discussions about re-working the infield and mound.

IHSAA official practice began March 11. During the limited contact period, Lopez had his team working out when they could find gym space.

“We threw in he gym whenever we could get it,” says Lopez. “If it was nice enough outside, we’d throw in the parking lot. We did conditioning in the hallways of the high school. We did baseball and flip drills in the weight room.

“We did a lot of conditioning, arm strengthening and working on swing technique and instilling the fundamentals. We wanted to hit the ground running when practice starts.”

Before going to North Vermillion, Lopez was assistant to Charlie Martin at Riverton Parke for one season then spent 10 years as Panthers head coach.

Lopez is a 1998 graduate of Vincennes Lincoln High School, where Chris Rhodes was his head coach, and 2002 graduate of Indiana State University, where he earned a elementary education degree with a social studies endorsement.

“He was a hard-nosed, fundamental-type of coach,” says Lopez of Rhodes, who was also his seventh grade basketball coach. “He was very successful in Vincennes.”

The Rhodes-coached Alices won sectional titles in 1996 and 1997 and a regional championship in 1996. Rhodes later coached at DeKalb.

Katelyn Foncannon, daughter of Lopez, is a cheerleader at Vincennes University.

Hank Lopez is the head baseball coach at North Vermillion Junior-Senior High School in Cayuga, Ind. He is also defensive coordinator for the football team.

 

Family life brings Neal closer to home with Attica Ramblers

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Baseball has taken Kyle Neal away from his home and it’s brought him back.

Neal is in his first season as head baseball coach at Attica Junior/Senior High School in Fountain County. He also teaches physical education and strength training.

The Neal family — Kyle, Christie, Carson (7) and Krew (9 months) — live in Veedersburg. That’s about 10 miles from the school.

When Royce Carlton left for Shelbyville, leaving an opening at Attica for a coach and teacher, Neal decided to apply for be closer to his wife and sons

The past four years, Neal has been making a commute of more than a hour each way to teach and to be head baseball coach — first at North Newton Junior/Senior High School in Morocco and then Frontier Junior/Senior High School in Chalmers.

Neal coached North Newton to 20- and 18-win seasons in his two seasons leading the program (2014 and 2015). The Spartans were put out of the IHSAA sectional both years by Lafayette Central Catholic.

In two seasons of guiding the Frontier Falcons, Neal saw the team win 15 and eight games.

As the Attica Ramblers get ready for the Class 1A Rockville Sectional, they look back on a 7-14 regular season. Attica and Rockville are paired in the first game of the sectional Wednesday, May 23. Other teams in the field are Covington, North Vermillion, Riverton Parke and Turkey Run.

Attica is in the Wabash River Conference (along with Covington, Fountain Central, North Vermillion, Riverton Parke, Seeger, South Vermillion and Turkey Run).

Neal grew up in Ladoga in Mongomery County. His earliest baseball experiences came at Ladoga Little League.

Between his eighth grade and freshmen year, he played for the traveling Montgomery County All-Stars and also for the Southmont High School summer team.

Neal learned fundamentals from Mounties coach Jerry Long and logged a few innings on the mound as a freshman, gleaning much from a senior catcher.

In 1998, Neal was part of a Southmont team that lost to eventual 2A state runner-up Evansville Mater Dei in the semifinals of the Richmond Semistate.

His last two high school years, Neal attended Bethesda Christian in Brownsburg. At the time, the school was not affiliated with the IHSAA.

But Neal picked up plenty of know-how from coach Bill Sampen, a former major league pitcher.

“He was a huge part of my growth in baseball,” says Neal of Sampen, who runs the Indiana Expos travel organization and Samp’s Hack Shack training facility. “He was real big on thinking the game of baseball. He’s just a smart guy.

“We still talk today and share ideas.”

In the summer between his freshmen and sophomore years, Neal played more for Southmont plus the Indiana Vipers and Crawfordsville American Legion Post 72.

The next summer, he switched to the Indiana Bulldogs and also played for the other two squads.

Leading into his junior year at Bethesda Christian, he again played for the Bulldogs.

He attended many camps before his senior year and wound up with a baseball scholarship to NCAA Division I Southeast Missouri State University. He was primarily a reserve second baseman in his one season in Cape Girardeau.

Mark Hogan was the Redhawks head coach. Neal credits SEMO assistant Scott Southard for teaching him the finer points of infield play.

“The coaches there were real supportive of a freshman in Division I baseball, where the speed of the game excelerates tenfold,” says Neal. “I learned to play at a higher pace and saw different kinds of pitching.”

Neal spent his last year college playing seasons at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, with Mark DeMichael as head coach.

“I learned perseverance and more on the spiritual side of things,” says Neal. “I learned how to handle myself on the field. It was a great experience.”

After his playing days, Neal spent a year gaining knowledge about the coaching profession as an IWU graduate assistant.

He then went into the work world for about seven or eight years, all the while teaching private lessons to stay involved in baseball.

Along the way, he got his teaching degree from Indiana Wesleyan, served three seasons as a Southmont assistant and then took his first head coaching gig at North Newton.

Kyle Neal, the head baseball coach at Attica Junior/Senior High School, shares a moment with sons Krew (9 months) and Carson (7).

The Neal family: Kyle and Christy with sons Carson (7) and Krew (9 months). Kyle Neal is in his first season as head baseball coach, physical eduction and strength training teacher at Attica Junior/Senior High School in Fountain County, Ind.