Looking back at Tracey Crull’s retirement and everything that led to Centerville’s 2022 baseball season

CENTERVILLE, Ind. — You know that video from last June? The one that captured Centerville baseball’s walk-off semi-state win over Linton-Stockton to send the Bulldogs to the state championship game? The one that shows then-head coach Tracey Crull’s legs go numb as he collapsed to the turf in tears?

Crull certainly does.

“The number of times I have watched that video since then,” he said. “It’s the best video I’ve ever seen. I can’t stop watching it.”

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He doesn’t remember much of what happened in the few minutes following that moment June 11, 2022, but Crull can recite everything from that last turn at bat like it was yesterday.

The Bulldogs led for the first six innings but trailed 5-4 after a rough top half of the seventh. After a leadoff flyout, Kollyn Peed “gets a big hit” to bring up the top of the order. Javontae Pamplin follows with a single of his own to put runners on first and second base. They move up to second and third on a wild pitch, putting Linton-Stockton in “all kinds of a world of hurt.” That forces the Miners to intentionally walk Logan Drook to load the bases with Centerville’s two best hitters up next. A new pitcher comes in and hits Keegen Schlotterbeck with his first pitch, forcing in the game-tying run and bringing up Jamari Pamplin with the bases loaded and still only one out.

As Pamplin hit the ball to deep right field, Crull threw his arms up for a brief second before coming back down to earth to make sure the ball landed. Every time Crull watches the video, he hears someone in the crowd yell “That’s game.” They were right. The ball sailed over the right fielder’s head, Crull fell to his knees, the winning run crossed the plate and the Bulldogs punched their ticket to Victory Field.

Once the celebration started to calm down, Crull shared a moment with assistant coach Jason Searcy, whom he’d coached with for 24 years.

“Searcy and I were off to the side at semi-state,” Crull said. “We said, ‘Is this real? We get to finish our careers at Victory Field. Who gets to do this?’”

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That’s the secret they kept from all but just a few people for the last four years.

‘Let’s stick this group out’

Crull and Searcy almost stepped away from coaching Centerville baseball after the 2018 season. They talked about it — spending more time with family was at the top of their wish list — but they ultimately decided to commit to four more years, and it had everything to do with the group of soon-to-be freshmen coming up.

“I went to school with a lot of their parents,” Searcy said. “I started watching them as freshmen and thought the group could do something, and we were like, ‘Let’s stick this group out and see what they do.’ Thank God we did.”

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The start of those four years wasn’t so positive. The Bulldogs began the 2019 season 0-11 with freshmen making up half the starting lineup all year.

“We made a decision that we were going to go young. When you do that, some people aren’t happy,” Crull said. “It was a process Searcy and I believed in, and we knew we had to take our lumps early, and we did.”

Something clicked after the first 11 games, as the Bulldogs won their next five, outscoring opponents 51-8. Then, they lost their last six games of the regular season. A week later, they found themselves in the sectional championship. Talk about a roller coaster of a season.

Centerville was matched up against Hagerstown, a team that had beaten the Bulldogs 8-0 and 19-7 earlier that same month. Those were the kids who fell just one step short of qualifying for the Little League World Series in 2013. The Tigers came into that sectional title game 25-1. Crull admitted Hagerstown was “way better” than Centerville and his team had “probably no business” being competitive in that game, but “our kids didn’t know any different.”

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So, there the Bulldogs were, down 3-1 in the top of the seventh inning with the bases loaded and then-freshman Keegen Schlotterbeck at the plate. He smoked a line drive down the left-field line that would have cleared the bases and given them the lead, but it landed foul by just a few inches.

Centerville went on to lose that game, but everyone saw the potential of those young players. The 2020 season was canceled due to COVID-19, and the Bulldogs were back-to-back sectional champions in 2021 and 2022. So, maybe starting all those freshmen in the beginning wasn’t so bad after all.

“When you believe that’s what you have to do to get to where we were going to go, who knows what this team would have done?” Crull said. “If we didn’t have the COVID year and the shot Keegen hit was fair, I swear they could have been a foot away from winning four sectionals.”

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‘It was a great ride’

It’s April 2022, the start of Crull and Searcy’s final season that only they and their families knew about. Centerville baseball was coming off one of the best years in school history, and this was going to be the year the Bulldogs broke through.

They beat the No. 3 team in Indiana Class 2A in the season opener. They beat the No. 1 team two weeks later. It was starting to look like Centerville might actually have a shot at making some noise in the state tournament.

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It was around that time that Crull decided to let Athletic Director Shane Osting in on his retirement plan. Crull’s only request was that it stay a secret until he was ready to tell the players himself. He wanted his last season, one filled with so much potential, to be about the players, not him.

Of course, the Bulldogs made it all the way to the state title game, giving Osting a few more weeks to try to convince his head baseball coach to stay, but Crull was at peace with his decision.

“After each championship — sectional, regional and semi-state — he’d come out there, and I’d say ‘Is this real? Is this happening?’” Crull said of Osting’s last-ditch efforts.

Centerville fell to Illiana Christian 10-1 in the state final. A few days later, the team had its end-of-season banquet. The following weekend, then-senior Logan Drook participated in the Indiana North-South All-Star games with Crull by his side. All that, and the players still didn’t know about their coach’s plan. Crull wanted everything team-related to be done before he told his players.

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On June 28, 11 days after the loss at state, Crull called a team meeting. That’s when he let them know.

“We were sad, but it was a good way for him to end it, even though I wish we would have brought it home for him,” Drook said. “It was bittersweet for him. For us, I wonder what we would have done if he told us before. I really appreciate everything coach Crull has done for me and everyone else on this team.”

Searcy had a similar bittersweet feeling seeing that last group of seniors leave.

“It was a great ride with great kids,” Searcy said. “As a coach, these championships are great and everything, but you always like knowing they’re great kids and will be successful when they walk out of here. That’s the thing I’m most proud about this group because I know they’re ready to do whatever life brings them.”

‘It was broken the whole time’

Supporting Drook at the North-South All-Star games was Crull’s last official duty as Centerville’s baseball coach. It was fitting because Drook was the most vital team member for the Bulldogs all season, keeping a secret of his own during their tournament run.

Drook slid into home plate in the first inning to score the first run of Centerville’s sectional championship win over Hagerstown. He then proceeded to pitch four scoreless innings before coming off the mound in the fifth with some right-leg discomfort. Didn’t seem like that big of a deal.

The next week, he pitched five scoreless innings in the regional semifinal win over Cascade before coming off the mound in the sixth, gingerly holding his right hand. A little unusual but not alarming by any means.

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The next week, he pitched four innings of two-run ball in the semi-state championship win over Linton-Stockton before letting the bullpen take over. Thought he might go longer, but everything seemed fine.

Results-wise, Drook was the same Tri-Eastern Conference Player of the Year everyone had expected him to be, but all you had to do was watch him pitch to know something was off.

Turns out, during that slide into home in the sectional final, Drook broke his right thumb.

“It was broken the whole time,” Drook said. “It was swollen three times the size it should have been. I was trying to keep it from everybody because I knew I could still perform at a pretty high level, and I’m not going to let people use that as an excuse for why I’m not performing like I used to … If I had a broken leg, I wouldn’t want people to know. You got to do what you got to do.”

Crull knew something was wrong — he figured Drook had broken something — but he also knew his star senior wasn’t going to get an X-ray while they were still playing because he would have been forced to sit out if what they thought was true. So, they limited his practice participation to almost nothing and played it by ear.

Drook said every pitch and every swing hurt, and adrenaline became his best friend. All Crull could do was watch in disbelief while Drook fought through game after game.

“We had to keep a lot of things under wraps,” Crull said. “I had people say ‘He’s not throwing quite like himself.’ No, he’s not. He’s got a broken thumb on his pitching hand, but I can’t tell you that. It was incredible.”

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‘I’m going to watch’

Centerville honored that 2022 baseball team — one that made it further than any Bulldog athletic team or TEC baseball team had before — with a state runner-up ring ceremony Dec. 21 before the varsity boys’ basketball game.

It was the first time since graduation that entire team was together again, but the players were in shirts and ties this time.

“Obviously, the goal is to bring home the prize,” Crull said. “But this school has been around for a lot of years, and this is the furthest any team in this school’s history has ever gotten. It’s pretty cool to be able to put up a couple extra banners in that gymnasium.”

Drook was appreciative of the ceremony, even though he didn’t believe it was deserved because they didn’t win, and looking at his ring reminded him of a moment before that group even got to high school. Believe it or not, the movie that was the 2022 Centerville baseball season started long before they played their first varsity game.

“I remember being 12 years old, sitting on Butch Schlotterbeck’s porch, and he was like, ‘You boys are going to the state championship,’” Drook recalled. “We were like, ‘Come on, Butch.’ It’s stuff like that you remember.”

Corey Van Skyock took over the program after Crull stepped down, and he has led the Bulldogs to a 2-1 record to start the 2023 season. Despite the graduation of eight seniors, there are still plenty of returning players who experienced last year’s success and have the hunger and expectation to do it all over again.

The day of the ceremony, Crull said it still hadn’t hit him that he was done coaching, but that day was coming soon. He said it’d probably hit him right after Christmas, when he used to come to the school at 6 a.m. in the freezing cold to let his players hit and throw.

“That’s when it’s going to hit me, when I don’t have to get up,” Crull said. “I’ve done that for 20-some years now. When I don’t have to do the things I’ve normally done in the spring, that’s when I’ll really realize it.”

So, what is Crull going to do with all his new free time?

“I’m going to watch,” he said in a joyous tone with wide eyes and a big smile. “Sitting there with no responsibility and just watching these kids is going to be a lot of fun for me.”

Zach Piatt is a reporter for The Palladium-Item. Contact him at zpiatt@gannett.com or on Twitter @zachpiatt13.

This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Everything that led to the Centerville Bulldogs' 2022 baseball season