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CovCath baseball team enters final month of regular season with state’s only perfect record


By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter

Covington Catholic’s baseball team will enter the final month of the regular season with the only perfect record in the state of Kentucky.

The Colonels raised their record to 16-0 with a 10-0 victory over Holy Cross in a home game on Tuesday. Later that day, the state’s only other undefeated team, Paducah Tilghman, lost a home game to McCracken County after posting 15 straight wins.

CovCath pitcher Tyler Hutson has a 4-0 record and 1.27 ERA with 33 strikeouts in 22 innings. (Photo by Bob Jackson)

CovCath doesn’t have any games scheduled until Saturday when the Colonels will begin the final month of the regular season with a pair of  home games against Dixie Heights at 10 a.m. and Conner at 3 p.m.

The Colonels have some impressive statistics at the plate and on the mound. In their first 17 games, they scored 171 runs and posted a .361 team batting average. The pitching staff has a 1.56 earned run average, giving up just 78 hits and 24 earned runs in 108 innings.

Those stats include one game that wasn’t completed. On April 12, CovCath and Campbell County were locked in a 9-9 tie after nine innings when the umpires ended the game due to darkness.

Seven pitchers have picked up wins for CovCath coach Bill Krumpelbeck, who has a 1038-441 career record in 44 seasons.

The team leader with a 4-0 record is senior right-hander Tyler Hutson, who has a 1.27 ERA with 33 strikeouts in 22 innings. In his last start against Dixie Heights on April 20, he allowed only two hits and one unearned run in seven innings.

Senior pitchers Jaden Siemer and Ashton Isler have each won three games. Isler didn’t allow a hit in the 10-0 win over Holy Cross on Tuesday and dropped his ERA to 1.27, the same as Hutson. Another senior pitcher, Sam France, has gone 14 innings without giving up an earned run and picked up two wins.

Sam France has not given up an earned run in 14 innings and has a team-high .426 batting average. (Photo by Bob Jackson)

All four of those pitchers are position players when they’re not on the mound. France is the team-leader in batting average (.426), runs scored (25) and extra-base hits (8) among starting players. Hutson has a .395 average with a team-high 19 runs batted in.

The other CovCath seniors who have .300 batting averages with 36 or more at-bats are Pete Williams (.392), Siemer (.389), Isler (.350), Owen Nally (.333) and Max McCauley (.333). Nally currently leads the state in walks with 23.

CovCath needs four more victories to extend its string of 20-win seasons, but they’ll face some challenges during the first week of May. On Saturday, the Colonels will take on a Conner team they edged, 5-4, in a game last week. On Tuesday, they’ll visit Beechwood, a team that has won nine straight games to lift its record to 16-2.


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