LIFE
2B • FOREST HILLS JOURNAL • APRIL 26, 2017
SHORT HOPS Continued from Page 1B
‘Coach K’ works toward winning baseball at Walnut Scott Springer sspringer@enquirer.com
» Turpin blanked Winton Woods 20-0 April 19. Goals for the Spartans: Guenther 7, Hurst 3, Teter 2, Wessels 2, Moher 2, Verdin, Crawley, Peterman, Bohenek. » Mariemont defeated Milford 12-5 April 22 as Anthony DiMechele scored five goals and Cole Harden added three.
Boys tennis » Milford 3, Anderson 2 on April 19. Sultan (A) d. Owens 6-4, 6-2; Mason (M) d. Feagins 6-0, 6-1; Spencer (M) d. Rothfuss 6-3, 6-1. Loepke-Hugenberg (A) d. EppersGibson 6-2, 6-2; Ostrander-Morehouse (M) d. Hoffman-Ray 6-3, 7-5.
Boys volleyball » Moeller took three straight from Fenwick April 18 and three out of four from La Salle April 20.
Clark Montessori AD honored » Brian Meyer of Clark Montessori recently was given the Horizon Award by the Southwest Ohio Athletic Directors Association. The award is presented to an active athletic administrator who has demonstrated within their first five years, signs of professionalism and involvement, which has made a difference in their school or conference.
WALNUT HILLS Wins on the baseball diamond have never come easy at Walnut Hills High School. Even before it was named the P&G MLB Youth Academy with some of the finest fields around, the Eagles have played at Roselawn Park. That means about a five-mile drive from campus via bus with the hope that post-school traffic is not too bad. Now that the park has been cleaned up, thanks to Major League Baseball and the Reds Community Fund, the Eagles have a little more to look forward to in terms of dugout space and amenities. Walnut Hills has had some up and down years and has found some tough sledding in the league and the postseason. In his second year at Walnut, coach Jack Kuzniczci is trying to reach the same heights the basketball program
Harden Continued from Page 1B
ment. That’s probably why Harden was recently inducted into the Connecticut Lacrosse Hall of Fame. In addition to his playing, he has been part of state championships as a coach in Connecticut, Georgia and at Mariemont High School. He has coached Mariemont boys for 11 years and
SCOTT S PRINGER/THE ENQUIRER
Walnut Hills coach Jack Kuzniczci, right, talks shop with Anderson coach Andy Ey on April 17.
has in a very competitive Eastern Cincinnati Conference. “They told me that they’ve never won a second-round tournament game,” Kuzniczci said. “We got to the second round last year and lost to Milford 2-0. That’s one of our goals this year, to get to the second round and knock somebody off.” Kuzniczci is plenty familiar with postseason success having won a state title with Madeira in
is in his fourth campaign with the girls. “A high school team is usually a reflection of the youth program,” Harden said. “Terrace Park and Mariemont have great youth programs like Sycamore and that’s why these teams compete.”
The challenge involves more than ice Harden knows a thing about competing and is tackling his disease head
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1999 and going to the state semifinals in 2002, 2007 and 2011. His 2011 trip featured his son, Cody Kuzniczci, who has helped coach the Eagles. It also featured a sophomore outfielder/pitcher named Andrew Benintendi, who now can be found in the Boston Red Sox box score most nights. “Coach K” still keeps tabs on his prized pupil. “I check at least three or four times a week to see how he’s doing,” Kuzniczci said. “I’m planning to go after school gets out (to see him) in Chicago. We stay in touch. I didn’t throw him any batting practice this year. He was in St. Louis in the winter working out there. The year before I threw him a fair amount of batting practice. I saw him in Tampa last year and I’m going to follow him as much as I can.” As for this current squad, there are no Benintendis. Cole Murphy had grad-
uated and gone to the University of Cincinnati before Kuzniczci arrived and he had one year with Bobby Brokamp last season. Brokamp now plays at Bellarmine. Last year’s 16-11 season was one of the better records in recent memory with Brokamp hitting .317 with a homer and 15 runs batted in from the leadoff spot and 18 stolen bases. He was also Walnut’s top pitcher with 39 strikeouts in 43.1 innings and a 1.78 earned run average. This year’s issue has been fielding a consistent lineup since their return from a spring break baseball trip to Cocoa Beach. “We haven’t had our full team together since we came back from Florida,” Kuzniczci said. “We had (catcher) Adam Seal out seven-and-a-half games with a concussion. We had a player get thrown out in Florida, so he sat a couple games. Now, Forrest Longeway, one of our better players,
hurt his wrist the other day. We’ll have to see what the trainer says on that one.” Still, Walnut Hills won five straight between April 5-10 to go to 9-3. Since then, they have hit the challenging part of their schedule. “We were hoping to get Turpin,” Kuzniczci said. “That’s a team that if we play really well, we might be able to get one of those games. We have Anderson, Milford, Loveland and Kings, so we have some really tough teams coming up.” Longeway was hitting .318 with a pair of homers before his injury. The Eagles have shown some pop with senior Gage Carpenter hitting in the upper .400s with three homers and sophomore Max Davenport also belting three dingers. Senior Jarred Sowder and junior Mike Sears have been top innings-eaters and Sears has also blasted a home run and hits over .380.
on along with the help of his family. His sister, Shea Harden, is the CEO of G-Force, a fundraising and awareness initiative started not long after Graham’s diagnosis. Already they have raised more than $200,000. Representing the G-Force in a Walk to Defeat ALS brought in $28,000 in September. There have also been other events like a charity golf tournament in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. On April 27 at Mariemont’s Kusel Stadium, the evening will be dedicated to supporting G-Force Game On (the full name) as the Lady Warriors take on Walnut Hills. Among the events planned is Cincinnati’s Largest Ice Bucket Challenge, which in recent years has brought more awareness to ALS. The family would like to move the G-Force Game On organization to a bigger purpose similar to “Team Gleason” started by supporters of Steve Gleason, a former NFL safety with the New Orleans Saints. Team Gleason has raised awareness and provided leading edge technology to others with neuromuscular diseases. “Hopefully, we’re able to take it to another level soon and help folks who are impacted by ALS,”
Harden said. “It’s a disease that very few people have, so understandably, it gets less attention. It’s in the same family as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s Disease. If you look at it as a whole, it’s like looking at cancer as a whole.”
thought was an old knee injury from his playing days. In self-deprecating fashion, he refers to himself as a “lug head." “I started to limp about a year ago and finally listened to my wife and went to the doctor,” he said. “It just sort of rolled from there.” He now relies on many of his lessons in sports and his heart and head to guide him. “You’ve got to be willing to compete,” Harden said. “That’s why I said, ‘Game on ALS! Let’s go!’ You can’t give in. Respect your competition, but go after your competition. That’s what these ladies (Mariemont lacrosse) do out on the field and it’s fun to watch.” The competitive spirit shows in Mariemont’s difficult schedule. They have lost to Division I Mount Notre Dame in overtime, defeated Columbus-area Worthington Kilbourne in overtime and taken down other powers like Springboro and Summit Country Day. The two-point loss to Sycamore stings, but if Mariemont can be inspired by their own coach’s challenge, they could prove to be a difficult tournament team. The schedule has no mercy and sometimes life doesn’t either.
Family, team and community support Graham and Dawn Harden have a lacrosseplaying son Cole at Mariemont, a daughter Lindsay doing honors work in South Carolina and another daughter at North Carolina, where she served as a statistician on the decorated men’s lacrosse team. In the Harden camp, it’s all hands on deck and forward in motion. He has no time for rear-view mirrors. “I don’t see the point in brooding over something I can’t control,” Harden said. “Why not focus on what you can do rather than what you can’t do?” Harden’s current treatment is done locally at the University of Cincinnati by Dr. Robert Neel. “He does what I tell him,” Harden joked. “I also help out with some studies because you can’t fight it unless you know about it.” The original diagnosis came from what Harden
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