Eric Hepple Pitches Coral Springs Christian Past Pompano

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Coral Springs Christian assistant coach Steve Carp is always telling his pitchers to start off strong and to finish strong. This was the motto that senior starter Eric Hepple took to the mound with him on Saturday afternoon in the HSBN Broward Game of the Week, and it was an approach that worked to perfection.

Hepple delivered a dazzling performance to lead the host Crusaders past visiting Pompano Beach 9-2, going the distance to earn the victory by pounding the strike zone and mixing his pitches throughout to stay in control.

Hepple set the tone early with a devastating fastball, which worked well to set up his off-speed stuff, and still had enough in the tank to keep pounding the mitt all the way to the final batter. The right-hander needed only 92 pitches, while holding the Tornadoes (4-7) to just two hits and five base runners in all.

“That’s what we want our guys to do,” said Crusaders Manager Matt Cleveland. “We’ve got some guys on the mound who could try to strike out everybody. They would still give up some hits and put some balls in play, but we’ve just been preaching to keep the pitch count down and get some outs on one pitch. Get ahead and let your defense work for you, because it helps the defense out too. Obviously Hepple did a great job of that today.”

Hepple recorded 10 strikeouts on the day, and also struck out the side in the second inning. The senior followed the plan to attack the Pompano lineup, hitting the zone with 62 of his throws while issuing just two walks and also hitting a batter. He went the full seven innings for the first time this season, while improving to 3-0 on the year.

“I feel honored to be in the Game of the Week, especially pitching in it,” Hepple said. “It feels good being able to play as a team, on a beautiful day that is not too hot and had just a little breeze. Everything just felt good.”

Hepple worked with freshman backup catcher Chad McDaniel throughout, and he also had a big lead late that made the coaches consider taking him out. The two teammates had a great repertoire, and the starter kept his pitch count low enough to convince his coaches that he could finish things out all on his own. It was their moment together, and the Crusaders staff made the decision to trust in the two of them.

“I don’t like coming out, so it feels great to finish,” Hepple admitted. “I was telling Coach I’ve got it and he just told me to finish it. I have complete faith in Chad, and Coach Feinberg does a great job working hard with the catchers. If anything happens to our starter, we have a backup that is just as good.”

McDaniel certainly proved his case, managing the game well and also throwing out the lead runner on an attempted double-steal in the top of the first inning.

While the final result was not in their favor, Tornadoes Manager Ryan Combs was happy for the opportunity to put his young squad up against such a quality opponent. Pompano has a roster full of many first-year varsity starters, and Combs knows competition like this is the best way for them to improve faster.

“I told our guys that we needed to face these guys to get us ready for the district tournament,” said Combs. “We can play some teams that get our stats up there and make us feel good about ourselves, but this is the kind of stuff that hopefully will make us better. That is what I told them afterwards; that we are going to put them in situations for them to succeed and we just have to come through. Hopefully we learn from games like this and playing good teams and we just get better. Obviously, the record would be nice and winning games, but it’s about getting better and learning from the mistakes that we made and making adjustments.”

After falling behind early, Pompano answered back with a productive third inning to even things back up. Bobby Aseere was hit by a pitch to put the lead runner on base, advanced to second on an errant pickoff attempt and then made it to third on a passed ball. Thomas Fengler helped complete Aseere’s trip around the bases when he drove a shot to left field for an RBI double. Another ball in the dirt allowed Fengler to move to third base, and AJ Marcantonio then knotted things up at 2-2 by driving Fengler in on a sacrifice flyout to deep center field.

It was an inning of solid execution from the Tornadoes, whereas the club has struggled to have such production on a regular basis.

“We put an inning together and we did a few things executing-wise,” said Combs. “Unfortunately we don’t have enough of those. When you face a good arm like that in a kid who is going D-I, we were able to get some confidence. When you face a good team like that they are going to score runs and we have got to be able to score runs with them. That is what we are trying to fix is that instead of just having one good inning we need to have three or four like that.”

The Crusaders (9-4) responded right back in the bottom of the third to take control, as they batted around the order to send 10 batters to the plate and open up an 8-2 advantage. Things got started when Pemron Burrows dropped a nice bunt down the first baseline, forcing the first baseman to field the ball while leaving the base uncovered for any defender to beat the speedy Burrows to the bag. The Crusaders centerfield then stole his second base of the day, and after Justin Neo was hit by a pitch to also reach base, Touki Toussaint sent a blooper into shallow right field to land just fair and allow Burrows to put his squad back on top for good.

Hepple kept things going by pushing Neo across on an infield groundout, and Chris Bec reached on a fielder’s choice that pushed Toussaint across the plate. Cary Boniske kept the chain moving by lining an RBI single to center to plate Bec, and when James Buckley was hit by a pitch to reach and move Boniske into scoring position Joey DePalo responded by scorching a shot deep to the left-center field gap to score Buckley. The Crusaders bats remained red-hot, as Josh Shrouder sent a liner down the left field line to drive in DePalo.

It was a tough frame for Pompano lefty AJ Marcantonio, who had pitched effectively early on before falling victim to a Crusaders lineup that erupted their second time through the order.

“It was just that one inning,” said Combs. “We missed a little bit and AJ had to throw a lot of pitches and I think he started to get tired there in the end and left some balls over the middle. It’s just one of those things that we’ve got to do better and we can’t miss down the middle against these good teams. But hopefully we get better from it and win some games later in the season because of the things we learned in games like this.”

Coral Springs Christian can relate to just such an approach. The squad struggled at the onset of the season, facing some of the toughest teams in the area and getting off to a slow start against them. They have rebounded of late and Saturday represented their most complete game of the season.

“Today was a well-played game with good defense, good pitching and timely hitting, and that’s what you’ve got to do,” said Cleveland. “We are just trying to get better everyday. That’s what we’ve been telling each other is to win the day. What happened at the beginning of the year was everybody was struggling at once. That happens in baseball sometimes, and these guys may have been putting too much pressure on themselves not having really been there before with the expectations. But we just stopped talking about expectations and just started talking about win the day everyday and trust the process. Ever since we started doing that we’ve gotten better.”

Coral Springs Christian got production from every starter on Saturday. The team made the plays when they needed to and focused solely on winning this battle. That focus was shown right from the start, as they rebounded from allowing two base runners in the first inning to keep Pompano off the scoreboard. Garrett Hiott singled with one out and Marcantonio walked, but the home team answered back by ending the threat with a strike-‘em-out, throw-‘em-out double play.

The Crusaders flipped the momentum entirely by plating their first run in the bottom of the first. Burrows reached on catcher’s interference, then made his way around the bases and scored on an infield groundout from Toussaint. They added to that lead with another RBI groundout from DePalo to send Bec home in the second.

Toussaint had a strong day at the plate, driving in three runs while going 2-for-4. He also closed out the scoring by crushing a 1-0 offering deep to left field for a solo home run in the bottom of the fourth.

It was a rewarding victory for the Crusaders and their fans, of which there was many on this gorgeous spring afternoon. Both teams had a strong show of support from their fans for the Game of the Week event, which only helped to add more energy and excitement to the atmosphere.

“We love it when you guys do this, and we love everything HSBN is doing for high school baseball,” said Cleveland. “Obviously it was nice to have a good crowd here and play well in front of a nice crowd. It was just a good day overall.”

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