JACKSONVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — Hartselle Baseball Coach Brad Phillips refers to Asher Doepel as the team’s spark plug. However, on Thursday in Jacksonville, he was more like the engine that willed the Tigers to a state championship.
The junior infielder and right-handed pitcher took home the Class 6A State Championship Most Valuable Player after leading the Tigers to the program’s 10th baseball championship in a series win over Chelsea.
Doepel entered game two in relief of Connor Stiles and picked up a save in the Tigers’ 2-0 victory, which forced a winner-takes-all game three. He would start game three for the Tigers and pitch 6.2 innings, striking out five and only allowing three runs.
At the plate, he tallied five hits and three RBIs over the two games.
“It’s hard to put what he did today in words. He’s our little spark plug. I think everybody around the program, the school and high school baseball that knows our program knows he’s been our little spark plug,” Phillips said. “There’s a lot of guys I trust with the ball, and there’s just a couple that you trust just a little bit more, and he’s one of those guys.”
Doepel was a member of the 2024 team that experienced one of the hardest weeks any high school team could face last season. Hartselle’s longtime baseball coach, William Booth, died the week of the Tigers’ state championship. Hartselle would then fall in that championship series to Hillcrest.
Coming into the season, he said that people probably didn’t think Hartselle would be back after the loss. But, as the old saying goes, tough times make tough people, and the foundation that Coach Booth built taught these players to embrace it.
“It’s always been hard work and kind of blue collar baseball,” Doepel said. “We outlasted teams, all the offseason stuff, I mean that’s just always been part of the culture, two-a-days and long lifts, practices, stuff like that.”
The hard work paid off for the young pitcher, giving him the endurance to be all over the field for the Tigers the last two days.
“I don’t feel anything now, but I probably will here in a couple of hours,” Doepel said. “It was fun, that’s what I wanted. I wanted that situation, I love it.”
Through the ups and downs of the championship series, Doepel did what he did all year long: give his team the spark it needed.
“It’s just infectious, and it’s every time he toes the rubber or he’s in the box or whatever the case may be, it’s super infectious,” Phillips said. “For our guys to be locked on him for the last seven innings of that game and really the first game as well, that’s really what I wanted to see right there and really that’s what I wanted them to see as well, cause they could feed off it.”
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