Eagles closed season on high note
Jun. 11—The Apollo High School baseball team closed the 2023 season on a high note with a run to the KHSAA State Tournament semifinals, and the Eagles are carrying that momentum into the offseason and beyond.
Apollo (25-13) fell 2-1 in a walk-off loss to Shelby County on Saturday, which snapped a five-game winning streak — the Eagles' longest of the year.
Apollo peaked at just the right time, according to first-year Eagles coach Brandon Dennis.
"If you said at the beginning of the year that we're going to be 25-13, I'd say that was a pretty good year for us, for what we knew we had," he said. "We got in the middle (of the season) there, where we struggled to score runsw and made things seem worse than they were. But I'm so proud of this group because they did find a way to pull it back together there at the end.
"They fought like crazy in the last week heading into the postseason. That's who they settled in to being, and I couldn't be prouder of the fact that they just fought and fought and fought."
Apollo won eight of its final 10 games, including three victories in three days in the 3rd Region Tournament. The Eagles then dispatched Beechwood 3-0 and upended Lexing Catholic 7-3 in the first weekend of the state tournament, on the way to reaching the fifth semifinal in program history.
"We came up short, but at no point did we ever quit," Dennis said. "That's the beauty of this team and makes me look forward to getting back at it next year."
Dennis also credited his team's six seniors for helping guide the Eagles throughout the year.
"They've done a good job doing whatever they've been asked to do in their roles," he said. "Josh Mayes, what he's done in the postseason for us at bat and what he's done in center field, we're nowhere near this stage if he doesn't have the postseason that he had.
"Hayden Cash had some great at-bats for us, Aiden Wells anchored us behind the plate when (Michael) Chaney wasn't back there, and we've had some guys that have done some good things and pulled everything together at the right time and tried to lead us as best they could."
With a strong crop of juniors set to return, as well as the trip to the state tournament, Dennis feels good about his program's future.
"We return so much and we have so much coming back, I think this experience is invaluable," he said. "These guys are going to build from it. We'll use the offseason to work on some things that maybe we didn't do so well as a team, and hopefully we're in the mix in the 3rd Region again next year."
