John Raffel
Sports Scene
It wasn’t quite the season that Beal City senior baseball player Drew Bechtel would have preferred, although he still put up some impressive numbers.
He ended up batting .419 and scoring 53 runs and 23 RBIs, with one home run, 19 walks, 12 strikeouts, and 23 stolen bases.
“He got hurt early in the year,” said Beal City coach Brad Antcliff.
“I didn’t play much this season because of injuries,” Bechtel said. “This year taught me to be a leader on and off the field. I tried to help our team as much as I could, both with the stick and glove. I hit pretty good at the leadoff spot. I tried to help our team.”
He focused on being an effective designated hitter.
“I tried to do whatever I could possible to help out the team,” Bechtel said.
Beal City was 26-11 and ended up falling in the regional.
“We had a pretty good year,” said Antcliff, whose team won the 2009 and 2010 state titles. “Our goal every year is to make it to Battle Creek [for the state finals.] We fell short of that goal; we won our conference and won our district and had a shot to win the regional and just didn’t get the key hits when we needed them.”
“We did all right,” Bechtel said. “Personally, I think we played the toughest schedule in all of D4. We had a lot of guys move to different positions. When guys played different positions like that, I think our team did a very good job and the best they could to win games.”
The Aggies won the Highland Conference title and the district title.
“We played a bunch of good-caliber teams tough,” Bechtel said.
During the summer, Bechtel has his workout schedule and is playing just about every day with the Saginaw Means. He’ll be playing Division 1 basketball at Oakland University.