'It's home': Hoban's win over Hiland means something extra to coach Derek Carmichael
WOOSTER TWP. — Derek Carmichael wasn't wearing purple Saturday.
But he was still right at home.
Carmichael — the son of the late Sean Carmichael — is now the head coach of the Hoban Knights, who faced off with the defending Division IV state champion Hiland Hawks in the premier matchup of the Sean Carmichael Classic.
Derek left a winner at the field that was basically his home growing up, with Hoban holding off Hiland's seventh-inning rally to prevail 3-2 to cap off an action-packed day of baseball at Triway, Wooster High School and The College of Wooster.
"It's home," said Derek, a former star baseball player at Triway. "It feels good, and it feels natural. This is where I learned to love the game."
The second-year coach of the Knights is now 2-0 at the showcase honoring his father. Hoban beat Waynedale in 2023 during another dramatic game.
But Saturday was about more than his team winning a game for Derek on the field named after his father Sean and grandfather Blaine.
"I have new colors on — and I love my new colors — but if you cut me open, purple will come out," said Derek, whose mother Angie Carmichael is the principal at Wooster Township Elementary in the Triway Local Schools system. "This is where I learned to fall in love with everything. I learned about life here. I grew up idolizing the high school players here. I got to be on the bench. From 2 years old, I got to be in the dugout. I've been a head coach two years, but I feel like I've been coaching for 30 years just because I got to learn at a young age."
Saturday's matchup saw two state title contenders flex their muscles in different ways but the bat of Hoban's Michael Ciavolella was the one that mattered most. One of several Division I college recruits on Hoban's roster, the Eastern Michigan-bound Ciavolella hit two solo home runs to give the Knights a 2-0 lead through three innings, including a impressive blast to centerfield into a stiff wind.
Those two homers made up half of Hoban's hits, as Hiland's Caden Coblentz and Jamin Troyer effectively shut down the rest of a powerful lineup.
However, Hoban's pitching shut down Hiland's bats as well, with starter Peyton Weigand picking up the win while throwing 3⅔ innings without allowing a run.
After Hoban shut them down for the first six innings, the Hawks rallied in the seventh inning for two runs — Troyer scoring on a throwing error and Cam Beachy on an RBI groundout from Cody Yoder — but still came up short, with the potential game-tying run stranded on third base as Ciavolella made a sliding catch to extinguish Hiland's hopes.
"(These) are games we want to play," Hiland coach Chris Dages said. "Getting to play teams like that lets us know where we're at and what we need to improve on. ... I've been looking forward to this game all year once I saw who we were playing."
While the Hawks haven't been quite as dominant as they were last year, when they went 30-1 and won the Div. IV state title game by 10 runs, they look to have all the tools to make another deep playoff run. With a lineup headlined by Brady Yoder, Cody Yoder, Caden Coblentz and Colin Coblentz, the Hawks have seen a mostly new staff of pitchers step up to make them a force going forward.
"They really set the bar," Dages said of Hiland's departed pitchers like Nolan Yoder and Will Schlabach. "These guys this year are really wanting to live up to it. They've been working hard all winter."
While Hoban's schedule is full of heavyweights, Hiland proved to be as big of a challenge as anyone else on the slate.
"It's a super clean baseball team. One through nine, a solid lineup," Derek Carmichael said. "They threw two really good arms against us. They play a clean style of baseball, where if we can play that way with the guys we have, we'll keep winning games. That's the model of small-school high school baseball. They do it right."
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Baseball: Carmichael cherishes leading Hoban back at Triway
