That old saying about how you can’t go home again? Don’t believe it.
Kevin Hayhurst is living proof that homecomings can work out better than anyone could have imagined.
Hayhurst coached Beecher softball to its fifth state title on June 7, with the Bobcats outlasting Carterville 5-2 in 10 innings in the Class 2A final in Peoria.
The game was played in a steady rain that left the artificial surface slick and the softballs tough to grip. But the drama of the moment left Hayhurst feeling parched. During a postgame interview, he asked someone to fetch a Mountain Dew.
“I get so dry,” he said.
Otherwise, Hayhurst was feeling on top of the world, as he has done multiple times before. He had a successful coaching stint at Thornwood, leading the Thunderbirds boys basketball team to second place in Class AA in 2001. And he was an assistant to fellow Beecher native Gary Lagesse on some of the state’s best softball teams in the 1980s and ’90s.
In 2003, Hayhurst returned to his hometown to coach softball at the junior high and high school. It’s been a remarkably successful run, with five IHSA state titles and five more state championships at the junior-high level.
Softball players in Beecher learn how to win and learn how to play the game the right way from an early age.
“It’s very difficult to repeat,” Hayhurst said. “It’s different kids and they’re getting different experience along the way. But they’ve been in some tradition and so they’ve been brought up the same in sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade — bunting, turning around to (bat on) the left side. So we still believe in that, though a lot of teams don’t believe in that.
“We still believe in stealing bases and bunting, putting some pressure on the other team. Because there’s not too many hitters like (Ava) Lorenzatti. She’s an unbelievable hitter.”
Put an elite player like Lorenzatti, a junior pitcher committed to Florida State, in Beecher’s system, and special things can happen. Ditto for Taylor Norkus, another junior pitcher committed to Colgate. For a Class 2A school with 354 students to have two Division I pitchers is pretty much unheard of.
And for all their talent, the Bobcats didn’t have an easy road to this title. They had to beat a 23-win Wilmington team in the regional final, survived to beat 34-win sectional host Seneca 1-0 and got past Brimfield/Elmwood in 10 innings in the supersectional.
“It’s so hard to even get (to state),” Hayhurst said. “I mean, get through a regional, get through the sectional. There’s a lot of good teams and (with) just one bad inning, those plans are done because it’s one and done. You don’t get four out of seven or three out of five.”
But once again, Hayhurst guided his team to the ultimate prize. And he can’t imagine a better place to do it.
“It’s great,” he said. “To be able to live in Beecher and be in a community — being raised there and just go around, see the parents I’ve had, all the different people come through here — it’s very special.”