Baseball Team puts exclamation point on Tipton’s amazing sports school year

Tipton — The athletic school year at Tipton High School started last fall with a great football season.

It continued in the winter with great seasons by the boys and girls basketball teams.

But this spring, well … greatness can’t last forever, can it? No, it can’t, it has to end at some point.

Just not yet.

This great Tipton sports story continued this spring with an exclamation point to this amazing athletic school year — the Cardinals have earned the baseball program’s first trip to the Final Four.

“The energy that started with the football team has been able to continue and build throughout the school year,” Tipton baseball coach Dylan Cooper said. “Competition breeds competition and success breeds success.

“It’s a great thing when it happens, it just feeds on itself.”

It’s easy to pinpoint why it’s happened.

“We have a deep senior class and there are a lot of male athletes in it, specifically,” said Cooper, 27, who’s a 2015 graduate of Tipton HS and in his sixth year at the Cardinals’ baseball helm. “I’ve been with these kids for six years, since they were in 7th grade, and we’ve been talking for several years now about leaving Tipton High School better than they found it.

“They’ve really embraced that.”

Now, in an all-Central Missouri Class 2 semifinal, 10th-ranked Tipton (23-5) will meet top-ranked Iberia (26-0) at 1 pm Monday at the Ozark Mountain Sports Complex in Ozark.

Cooper wants the Cardinals — who are riding a 15-game winning streak — to be more than a one-hit wonder.

“This season has been one for the books,” Cooper said. “But we want to become the best Tipton baseball program we can be, not just the best Tipton baseball team we can be.”

And for that to happen, it goes deeper than just wins and losses

“All in all, we’ve had our successes on the field,” Cooper said. “But we’ve also worked on things along the way to become better humans. That’s our ultimate goal here.”

Well said, coach.

The Cardinals have a roster of 16 players and eight of them are seniors. That’s a staggering number by any measure.

These guys actually assumed the role of seniors when they were sophomores — the Cardinals had zero juniors or seniors on the roster two years ago.

“They were forced to be leaders at a young age,” Cooper said, “because they were put in that position.”

Between the lines, all baseball conversations start on the mound and this team has gotten some great pitching — only four runs allowed in four games since the start of district play.

“You can’t say enough about our pitchers this postseason,” Cooper said. “Only four runs allowed against four good teams?

“I would totally sign up for that.”

The Cardinals have a clearly-defined 1-2 punch at the top of the staff. And on this senior dominated team, both are underclassmen.

Junior righthander Lucas Cashman is the ace, as he’s drawn most of the Cardinals’ toughest opponents.

Cashman is 8-3 with a 1.80 ERA, and teams are batting only .197 against him; the No. 2 hurler is freshman lefthander Eli Higgins, who’s 7-0 with a 2.50 ERA.

A perfect example of what this dynamic duo can do came in the district tournament.

In the district semifinals, Cashman threw a no-hitter against Linn, before Higgins went the distance in an eight-inning, 2-0 win over Eugene in the title game.

“They attack the zone, throw a lot of strikes, and our defense has played well behind them,” Cooper said. “They’ve pitched well all year.”

The third pitcher is freshman Paxton Pyle, who recorded the final four outs in the 7-2 quarterfinal win over Schuyler County.

The staff has worked with senior catcher Tyler Baer, who’s a four-year starter and returning All-Stater — and an anchor both behind the plate and in the lineup, where he bats third.

“He’s most definitely like having a third coach on the field,” Cooper said of Baer, who’s also the valedictorian of this senior class.

“He calls the pitches, we put the game in his hands.”

Baer is hitting .420 with 33 hits, three home runs and 30 RBI.

Cashman bats leadoff and is hitting .321 with a .462 OBP, two homers, 23 RBI and 34 runs scored; Pyle bats second and is at .429 with 39 hits, three home runs and 17 RBI; and 6-2, 230-pound sophomore first baseman Sam Duke bats cleanup and is hitting .281 with 25 hits and 18 RBI.

Rounding out the probable starting lineup are sophomore Will Cashman (.261) batting fifth, followed by speedy senior Charlie Miller, senior Cain Myers (who hit a home run against Schuyler County), senior Rhett Lambert, and senior Braden Fischer bats ninth and “does a good job of getting the lineup turned over to the top.

“I think what separates us from a lot of teams,” Cooper continued, “is our depth in the bottom half of the lineup.”

The winning attitude created on high school playing fields usually carries over to the school’s hallways. Does Cooper actually see it in the actions of the student body?

“Yes I do, completely,” Cooper said. “We want the kids in our school to be competitors no matter what they’re doing.”

After the Cardinals clinched their spot in the semifinals, Cooper had an interesting take on the final week of this season.

“Obviously, I was excited about going to the Final Four,” he said. “But ultimately, I got four more days of practice and six more days to spend with these guys.

“We got to extend the season as long as possible, and it’s exciting.”

Considering the amazing sports year Tipton has enjoyed, that’s only fitting.