Central High School baseball team ranked No. 1 in nation. How these Red Devils got there

Central High School’s baseball team won the Alabama Class 7A state baseball championship two years ago and finished as the runner-up last year. But this year’s team has achieved an unprecedented level in the program’s history.

The Red Devils, now with a 33-3 record, were ranked No. 1 in the nation by the coaches who voted in Baseball America’s poll that was released April 9.

“It’s an honor,” Central head coach AJ Kehoe told the Ledger-Enquirer. “There’s a lot of great, great teams in this country that never receive that honor. … Proud for our school and our community, and just proud for our guys and our coaches that put in so much work.”

At first, Kehoe didn’t want to acknowledge the ranking, thinking it would put too much pressure on his team.

“But after praying about it a little bit and understanding it’s really a blessing and it’s a great opportunity for our kids, we kind of embraced it,” he said.

So, his message to the players was, “Enjoy it, but understand it doesn’t guarantee them anything. Their focus still has to be on all the little things.”

Keys to Central baseball’s success

And it’s the little things that are big things for these Red Devils. For example, when a Central runner takes advantage of a ball in the dirt and safely hustles to the next base, “the dugout goes crazy,” Kehoe said.

“We’ve just got a little gritty group that just works so hard day in and day out,” said Central senior pitcher and outfielder Hunter Wippert, a Chattahoochee Valley Community College signee.

Central senior first baseman Landon Beaver, a UAB signee, put it this way: “If we get knocked in the mouth, we’re going to get back up and bite your knees off on the way up.”

Beaver and Wippert are the team’s only college scholarship signees or pro prospects, Kehoe said, so depth is another key to success for the Red Devils.

“We use a lot of different people at different times,” he said, “which really helps your role players, keeping them engaged, making sure they have intent during workouts.”

Kehoe sensed his team was being overlooked coming into this season. After all, Central lost so much talent to graduation — the majority of its best pitchers and five hitters in the starting lineup, most notably two-time Alabama Class 7A Hitter of the Year Jax Yoxtheimer, who now plays for UAB.

“No one gave us any credit,” Kehoe said. “No one felt like Central was going to have a chance. … Our guys really took it personally.”

But when the Red Devils opened the season by winning a tournament that included a 2-1 victory over Bob Jones, which was top-ranked in the state at the time, “it just kind of snowballed and gave us some confidence,” Kehoe said. “We were able to throw a lot of these inexperienced players in the fire early, to see what they were made of mentally, and all of them did fantastic.”

Central also showed perseverance. In their first 20-something games, the Red Devils had around eight comeback wins, Kehoe said

“They just had a presence about them,” he said. “They really believed in one another.”

When they received the No. 1 ranking, the Red Devils had only one loss, 3-2 to Mill Creek on March 2. Then, while playing five games in four days last week, they lost two of three to area rival Auburn, but they bounced back by sweeping two games from Dothan.

The losses to Auburn were gut-wrenching. Central led 4-0, but Tanner Waldrop’s grand slam propelled Auburn to an 8-5 win. Then it was 1-1 in the seventh inning when Waldrop (an Auburn University signee) foiled Central again, this time with a walkoff homer.

“Emotionally and mentally, I think, we were drained,” Kehoe said. “Physically, we were beat up a little bit and tired. … It showed a lot of their character (to respond by sweeping Dothan).”

Now, the Red Devils finish the regular season with games April 17 and 18 against Smiths Station. Central is tied with Smiths Station at 3-1 in the area, followed by Auburn at 2-2. The top two finishers in the four-team area qualify for the state playoffs.

“We’re going to find out what we’re made of this week,” Kehoe said.

Central players praise their coach

Beaver (.386 batting average, .492 on-base percentage), Wippert (.328 BA, .504 OBP) and Emory Yohn (.310 BA, .417 OBP, 33 stolen bases) are the team’s leading hitters.

Cam Norton (8-0, 1.05 ERA), Wippert (7-1, 2.34), Briggs Cameron (4-0, 2.13) and Jordan Balkcum (4-0, 1.43) are the team’s leading pitchers. And the Red Devils praise their head coach for guiding them.

This is Kehoe’s seventh season as the head coach of Central’s baseball team. Players consider him as the father figure of this family.

“He keeps it real with you,” Beaver said. “He tells you how you need to hear it. He wants you to be a better man and a better ballplayer. … He speaks to us like human beings, not just like, ‘Do your job,’ but he talks to us one-on-one to make sure we get better and do the right job next time.”

“He’s just a great guy to be around,” Wippert said. “He takes his job really seriously, and he works hard, even when he’s outside of this place, watching film and just doing stuff to make us better.”

Kehoe bases his coaching philosophy on relationships.

“We’ve been through a lot of things since we’ve been at Central, a lot of really difficult personal-type things within our program,” he said. “It’s brought us together in a lot of ways, but it’s still something that can be a distraction and hard to manage sometimes. But it’s important to our kids, it’s important to our coaching staff, to be great people and to just go out there with God’s gifts and be the best they can be.”

Although he declined to specify those tough situations, Kehoe noted he sometimes advises a player about the curveballs they face at home and in school before he suggests how to handle them on the field.

“They’ve got a place to come,” he said. “They’ve got friends they can talk to. They have counselors available on a weekly basis. They have coaching staff they can talk to. And they’re comfortable enough to be able to do that, which is great. … It’s not perfect, but there’s a lot of love there. Everyone trusts one another, and they know they care about each other.”