Caston baseball roundup: Coach Mollenkopf on coaching sons: ‘It’s special’

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

REMINGTON — The Caston baseball team had many heroes on its way to a sectional championship. Here is a look at some of them:

Eli Holloway

Caston senior shortstop Eli Holloway got a second chance in his at-bat against West Central’s Teagen Holle in the bottom of the seventh inning of their Class 1A, Sectional 50 baseball final Monday, and he came up with perhaps Caston’s biggest hit.

After the West Central first baseman dropped his foul pop, Holloway would eventually reach on an infield single up the middle to move Logan Mollenkopf to second. Gavin Mollenkopf would follow with a walk to load the bases, and London Herd ended it with a walk-off sacrifice fly.

Now Holloway and the Comets prepare for today’s regional against Fort Wayne Blackhawk. Start time is 11 a.m. at Carroll High School in Fort Wayne.

“It feels great just to be a champion,” Holloway said. “Especially senior year.  It just feels great not to be done after sectionals.”

Holloway was asked what it takes to win a sectional.

“It’s a lot of hard work and a lot of screaming,” a smiling Holloway said. “A lot of cheering on your teammates all the time.”

West Central trailed 5-2 after six innings but tied it on Holle’s inside-the-park, two-out, three-run homer in the seventh.

“I think we were a little disappointed at first,” Holloway said. “But then coming in and ending that inning and talking to Coach, I think it really helped us bounce back.”

Holloway said he was “very, very relieved” when his foul pop was dropped.

“I was ready to put one in play this time for real,” Holloway said.

Holloway started his varsity career as a designated hitter but he has spent the last three years as the primary shortstop.

He made two strong throws on grounders in the hole to retire Hayden Johns and Isaac Warner on consecutive at-bats in the sixth.

“Honestly, we were a little rocky at the beginning of the season,” Holloway said. “We had a lot of errors, about four each game. But coming into sectionals, we were locked in, and I don’t think we had many errors at all honestly.”

Holloway said the team is close, often going out for Saturday morning breakfasts if the team had a game later that day.

During the on-field celebration, Holloway made sure to take a photo with assistant coach Dan Miller and his family. Miller is the hitting coach that gave him confidence that he was ready for varsity in the spring of 2023.

“He was actually one to give me rides when I was younger,” Holloway said. “But he was my hitting coach too. He just always told me what to do, and I listened, and it made me better.”

London Herd

Once again, Caston has a first baseman with a fierce left-handed bat and the last name Herd, but it is a different guy.

Noah Herd graduated last year after earning first-team Class 1A All-State honors.

His younger brother London, now a sophomore, mans the position. He is hitting .417 with 27 RBIs.

“I always want to be better than him,” Herd said. “And we had a lot of morning workouts, always busting our tail. Just working through all our situational baseball.”

The 27th RBI won the sectional.

“I’m trying to think, keep it short, get it out of the infield, drive a run in and win the sectional,” Herd said of his walk-off sacrifice fly.

Holle was the center fielder who caught Herd’s fly ball and who made an accurate, if slightly late, throw to the plate. Holle had pitched the first six innings, but West Central coach David Allen replaced him with Tate Leman with Herd coming up.

Herd said he was not expecting the pitching change. Herd described Holle’s stuff as “nasty,” praising his fastball, location, curve and movement. Herd had an infield hit in the five-run third, but that might have been helped by Holle not running over to cover first on Herd’s ground ball to the right side.

“I had only one hit and two strikeouts against that Holle kid,” Herd said. “He’s pretty good, got good stuff.”

Herd was asked how the team shook off Holle’s inside-the-park homer. At first, he said he did not know.

Then he remembered a game against Wabash on May 21. A ranked Class 2A team that won 22 games, Wabash led Caston 6-2 going into the bottom of the seventh before the Comets rallied to win 7-6.

“We’re a gritty team,” Herd said. “After Wabash, we figured we can do this to anybody. … Walk off. Same situation.”

Brodie Howard

Pitchers who pitch only in relief in Class 1A baseball might be rare, but that is Howard’s role for Caston.

He appeared in all three sectional games, covering five innings. In 12 pitching appearances on the season, he has pitched just 25 ⅓ innings. But he recovered to retire Zane Wall on a comebacker after giving up Holle’s inside-the-park homer Monday.

He is 3-1 with a 3.87 ERA with 37 strikeouts.

“It’s a little sore,” Howard said after the game Monday. “But all the icing and recovery between games really helped keep my arm strong every game.”

But in the moment after giving up the inside-the-park homer, he had to refocus.

“It really hurt us, and I just knew I couldn’t let it happen again,” Howard said. “So I just focused on batter after batter just to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Howard, a junior, is also an integral part of the defense at second base.

“It feels great,” Howard said. “To know all the hard work we put in this season is finally paying off.”

Howard played his first two years at Pioneer before transferring. He also plays soccer in the fall and basketball in the winter.

“I just started playing travel ball with some of the kids here, and they kinda just felt like family,” Howard said. “I met coach Mollenkopf, and he embraced me and made this team feel like a family. … I feel like everybody came together as the season went on, and now we’re all one.”

The Mollenkopf brothers

Brothers Gavin and Logan Mollenkopf were in the middle of the action during the sectional final. Their father is coach Blake Mollenkopf.

Gavin, a senior catcher, went 1 for 2 with an RBI single, a hit by pitch and a crucial walk in the seventh inning in which he came back in the count after falling behind 0-2.

He is hitting .451 with a 1.224 OPS on the season.

“I just give thanks to God for giving us this opportunity,” Gavin said. “I can’t think right now. It’s just crazy. You see all the sectionals won in front of you by kids older than you, and then you do it yourself, and it’s a great feeling to have, especially with your dad as the coach and your brother senior year.”

Gavin said it was not difficult to keep his composure after Holle’s inside-the-park homer.

“I knew we were going to bounce back,” Gavin said. “Like the Wabash game is a great example. We were down early, and then we came back and bounced back. And I feel like we have that dog in us, that we’re just going to bounce back, whatever happens to us.”

Said Logan: “We got locked in pretty quick. Other than that ground ball that about got through and they got a guy on, it was us from there.”

Gavin had to balance catching Carson Harness, his brother and Howard during the sectional.

“To be honest, we’ve got a great relationship, so it’s not that hard,” Gavin said. “It’s pretty simple if you get that time. That’s where those times in the open gyms in the gym where you’re getting used to it, that helps a lot.”

Logan was asked if winning a sectional was more emotional than he thought it would be.

“A little bit, yeah,” Logan said. “Honestly, I was just focused on the game more than after.”

Blake Mollenkopf

Caston won its third sectional title, and Blake Mollenkopf has coached all three, also guiding Caston to titles in 2012 and 2022.

The 2012 title also happened at Remington Community Park. It is a site with many great wins and crushing losses during his two-decade career at Caston.

It is a massive park with deep fences, and that seemed to come into play on Holle’s inside-the-park homer.

But then, the Comets responded immediately.

“It’s not very often you see an inside-the-park home run, but this is a big park, a lot of ground to cover out there,” coach Mollenkopf said. “And he put it in the right location and ran hard. Credit to him. But I just mean, great at-bats by our kids in the seventh. That was our thing. We were going to get a guy on and get him over and find a way to scrap him across. I didn’t care how and what. It didn’t need to be that fabulous double we’ve been having all year and the great hits.

“That was about the shortest sac fly we’ve ever had, but you’ve got to put pressure on them. He had a great throw. … He about did it again to us, but I thought Logan just did a great job of watching my hand drop. … Great slide, bang bang, and you win it. We’ll take it. We needed it.”

One of coach Mollenkopf’s tasks was tracking pitch counts for Harness, Logan Mollenkopf and Howard.

When the sectional schedule came out, Caston found out that their sectional opener against South Newton was on a Thursday.

Per IHSAA pitch count rules, no pitcher could throw more than 60 pitches against South Newton if he wanted them to be eligible for their semifinal game against Tri-County on Saturday. And no pitcher could throw more than 60 pitches against Tri-County if he wanted them to be eligible to pitch against West Central on Monday.

“It was a lot,” coach Mollenkopf said. “I’ve never done it this way. But we just had three guys that we thought were really good, and we knew they all needed to see the mound at crucial times, and they all needed to be fresh. Carson on Saturday was just absolutely lights out. That’s the best I’ve seen him throw in three years. Today I was going to start Logan, and when a guy is that hot, I decided to stick with Carson. And he was good. He wasn’t as sharp, but we’ve also asked a lot of him this week, and he kept us competitive. Logan’s got wipe-out stuff. It’s really good, but if he gets in trouble, and finding the zone is where he sometimes will get in trouble, and Brodie’s a guy that’s back in the zone real quick. I just thought with the nine-hole and the top, we needed to get in the zone back quickly.”

Coach Mollenkopf was asked how he was enjoying the moment as a father.

“It’s special. I’ll leave it at that,” coach Mollenkopf said, his voice beginning to crack. “It’s special.”

The regional

While Caston was busy winning their third sectional, Fort Wayne Blackhawk was busy beating Fort Wayne Canterbury 14-4 Monday for their 17th sectional title. All 17 sectionals have come since 2001.

While the win over Canterbury clinched the title, a 6-5 win over Fremont on Fremont’s home field in the semifinals Saturday might have been more impressive. Fremont made it to semistate as recently as 2024.

Kyler Wood had the walk-off RBI double against Fremont, and he followed it up with a single, a double and three RBIs against Canterbury.

Max Warner went 4 for 7 with five RBIs in two sectional games. All four hits went for extra bases – two doubles, two triples.

Wood typically hits third and Warner clean-up. Both are sophomores.

Senior Brady Ellington led the Braves innings pitched with 33, and he also pitched in both sectional games. He went 3-1 with a 4.03 ERA during the season.

Warner had eight strikeouts in four innings of relief work against Fremont.

Grant Knudson provides a .327 bat in the lineup and the versatility to play right field or first base. He also gave the team 19 innings of mound work.

Fort Wayne Blackhawk is 8-14, but none of their losses have been to Class 1A competition.