Zach Cowperthwaite had plenty of help as he battled Oxford Hills of South Paris standout Colton Carson during their epic pitchers’ duel at Morton Field in Augusta on Tuesday with the Class A North baseball championship at stake.
First and foremost were his baseball brothers, Cowperthwaite’s Bangor High School teammates and coaches who have relished the grind of seeking to uphold the Rams’ status as four-time defending state champions.
Also a key element of the junior right-hander’s support system was his family, particularly older brother Nick. The 2017 Bangor graduate pitched the Rams past Oxford Hills 7-0 in last spring’s regional semifinals and then worked into the ninth inning of Bangor’s 4-3 victory over Falmouth in the state championship game.
“Before the game he gave me a good long talk because he pitched against Oxford Hills last year,” Zach said. “He told me what to do, to relax and just play baseball.
“He couldn’t make it to the game (Tuesday), but the whole game he kept texting my mom and checking in. He kept telling her to go talk to (me) and help me relax. She didn’t do that but I could see her up in the stands and my dad was on the sideline and I could see him making hand signals to relax and just keep doing what I was doing.”
What Cowperthwaite did on that day was complete an 84-pitch masterpiece, overcoming Carson’s 14-strikeout gem with a two-hitter of his own as Bangor scored a dramatic 5-1 win on Tyler Parke’s tie-breaking grand slam with two outs in the bottom of the seventh.
“Zach’s a big, strong kid, just a gamer,” said Bangor coach Dave Morris, whose 18-1 Rams face South champion Gorham (15-4) for the state title at 1 p.m. Saturday at Saint Joseph’s College in Standish. “I think Zach had been in those situations a couple of times already this season and we just talked about pounding the zone.”
Cowperthwaite threw first-pitch strikes to 17 of the 24 Oxford Hills batters he faced in the pressure-packed regional while avenging his lone loss of the spring. Two-thirds (56) of his pitches went for strikes as he took a no-hitter into the sixth inning.
“The most Zach has thrown in a game this year is 103 pitches, but in that game we made two or three errors that tacked on about 20 pitches,” Morris said. “He’s been so efficient. He’s thrown about 70 percent strikes and the even better thing is he’s been around 65 percent with first-pitch strikes.
“Because of that he’s keeping his walk total down to two or less a game and that helps us make plays behind him and not give people extra bases.”
Cowperthwaite’s most recent outing represented another chapter of consistency in his emergence this spring as Bangor’s latest ace. He has joined a group that during the Rams’ championship run has included not only his older brother but three hurlers who have gone on to pitch at the University of Maine in Justin Courtney, Trevor DeLaite and Peter Kemble.
Cowperthwaite is 7-1 this spring with just 39 hits, 11 walks and 13 earned runs allowed in 51 innings.
“Every time he’s gone out there he’s pitched well,” said Parke, Bangor’s senior catcher. “He plays hard and he always improves as he goes along.
“I just have a huge amount of confidence with him on the mound.”
If anything might be surprising about Cowperthwaite’s pitching prominence, it’s only that he had not made a varsity start on the mound until this spring.
“We knew he could pitch,” said Morris, “and on most teams last year he probably would have pitched but with his brother and Kemble and Gary Farnham and Noah Tappan we wanted Zach to focus on playing third base as a sophomore and he did a good job of that.”
Cowperthwaite began to get more pitching work during last summer’s American Legion season with the city’s Coffee News Comrades, particularly during postseason play, as they won their third state championship in the last four years.
“He pitched against Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, in the Northeast regional last year when we ran out of guys and did a good job in that game, too,” said Parke.
Cowperthwaite is eligible for another big-game pitching start Saturday when Bangor attempts to become the Maine first high school baseball program to win five consecutive state championships. He’s likely to get that opportunity.
“It just feels awesome to be here again and get to play in the state championship game again,” he said. “It’s awesome to be able to pitch and be on the mound with this team knowing how good we’ve been.
“I just can’t wait to play again.”
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