Belton-Honea Path off to solid start under new head coach Chad Roper
Bears 11-9 on the season and 5-4 in Region 1-AAA
Honea Path – When Chad Roper returned to his alma mater, Belton-Honea Path High School, to become its baseball head coach, he inherited a team that was almost as new to the BHP varsity program as he was.
“We have a team with not a lot of varsity game experience from last year,” said Roper, a second-round selection of the Minnesota Twins out of high school in the 1992 Major League Baseball draft. “The strength of the team so far has been throwing strikes and making teams put balls in play. The defense has been pretty good so far and the offense has been OK.”
The Bears are 11-9 on the season and 5-4 in Region 1-AAA.
The majority of the innings were spread out among five pitchers. Senior right-hander Boyd Maynard had worked 27 1/3 innings, junior righty Aidan Jenkins 22 2/3, senior righty Ethan McElveen and freshman righty Jud Lowie both had 15 2/3, and senior righty Madox Vipperman 14.
The Bears walked only 40 batters through their first 100-plus innings. Maynard had a 1.28 earned run average, McElveen was at 1.34, Jenkins at 1.85, Lowie at 3.13 and Vipperman at 5.50.
Junior leftfielder Preston Dixon and senior centerfielder Tye Kelley lead the offense. The lefty-swinging Dixon had a .348 batting average, while Kelley had a team high .389 mark.
Maynard was batting .302, Vipperman .294, senior rightfielder Colby Bates .278, senior catcher Eli Satterfield .265, McElveen .200, Lowie .194 and junior second baseman Rhett Turner .188.
BHP SOFTBALL ROLLING ALONG
The BHP softball team, the defending AAA state champion, was off to a strong start. The Bears won 18 of their first 21 games with the only losses coming to defending AAAAA state champion Summerville and perennial AAAAA power Byrnes.
“We’ve had a good 1st half of the season,” said head coach Jarad Jennings. “We have a tough schedule ahead of us to finish up the regular season. We need to get healthy and be playing our best softball by the end of the month to make a run in the playoffs.”
BHP, which opened 4-0 in region play, was hitting just over .300 as a team and averaging seven runs a contest. Leading the way was Emma Jo Evans with a .477 average, while Carsen Foster was batting .355.
Addi Vaughn and Carli Smith have been handling the pitching duties The team earned run average was 2.70.
