Overcoming Obstacles: North’s Hensley is The Republic Baseball Player of the Year

Connor Hensley was a basketball and baseball standout in middle school, but by the time he got to Columbus North High School, he was fighting a battle that kept him off the court and field more than he was on them.

The summer before his freshman year, Hensley began experiencing stomach problems. He spent a couple days in the hospital his freshman year and was back for tests a couple times as a sophomore.

Finally by his sophomore year, Hensley was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, a gluten allergy that attacks the small intestine.

“It’s in the stomach area, so they had to rule out appendicitis and all that kind of stuff, but it just kind of kept circling back to Celiac,” Hensley said. “So we just had to figure out ways to avoid it. Anything with gluten in it, like flour, wheat, that kind of stuff, every time I went into school, I just had some kind of sickness to do with it from touching things and things like that. It was all the time happening, so I was trying to battle through that and get back to baseball, so that was not fun.”

Hensley was able to overcome the disease and star for the Bull Dogs as a junior and senior. He led North to this year’s Conference Indiana title and is The Republic Baseball Player of the Year.

The three years of high school baseball came after missing his freshman season while battling Celiac.

“With that, I wasn’t really in the mood to play because we hadn’t got it completely under control yet because that eighth-grade summer was the first time that I really had it,” Hensley said. “I just didn’t really feel like playing that year, so I just waited it out until sophomore year.

“Going into that summer with four or five months of not seeing any baseball at all, it was tough,” he added. “Summer ball, I did pretty well and worked in the fall pretty hard, and then that sophomore year when I came back, I did really well.”

Hensley played mostly junior varsity basketball, while dressing varsity, as a sophomore. Then in baseball, he played mostly catcher for former coach Pat Antone.

That summer, Hensley played travel baseball with Demand Command and worked on pitching with coach Logan Rogers.

“He’s a big pitching coach, so when I went back to travel ball, I told him, ‘I didn’t pitch at all for high school,’” Hensley said. “So going back into that summer season, he was working with me, and I was trying to get my innings back up, so going from high school ball to travel ball was that filler to where I could use travel ball to work on it for high school. So once I got back to high school, I was good to go. Then my junior and senior years, I spent all fall working on things that I needed to work on. I fixed up a bunch of stuff there, and I’ve just been going at it ever since.”

Mike Bodart took over as North’s coach Hensley’s junior year, and Hensley became the Bull Dogs’ No. 2 pitcher behind last year’s Republic Player of the Year, Luke Harmon.

“Connor did an outstanding job as a junior and came back as a senior and was trying to have a good, solid year, and he did that,” Bodart said. “It was amazing. As the season went along, he just got hit after hit, and his pitching numbers, he was just solid and tough for the batters to handle.”

After playing with Demand Command again last summer, Hensley came through with a big senior season at North. He went 4-1 with a 1.02 ERA and led the Bull Dogs with a .456 batting average and 18 runs scored.

“Last year at the end of the year, I noticed a mechanical issue, so during summer ball, last year and last fall, when we had our indoor and outdoor hitting, I just worked on fixing the mechanical issues that I had, and I started seeing success in that area,” Hensley said.

Bodart said Hensley also took over as a leader.

“He’s a pretty reserved young man,” Bodart said. “He’s not going to yell and cuss. He’s pretty even keel. Anytime you have somebody that has that talent, it’s kind of an unwritten role that guys are going to look up to him and kind of go the way he goes.”

Hensley is the second member of his family to be named Republic Baseball Player of the Year. His father Greg earned the honor in 1989, when he was an All-State player at Columbus East.

But instead of following in his father’s footsteps at East, Connor wanted to forge his own path.

“I just wanted to go opposite from him,” Hensley said. “Starting off, I really enjoyed basketball at North, and fortunately for me, both of those sporting programs were really good. For me, that meant I had to work for it, so I had to earn my way there, which is something that’s hard to do.”

Connor is headed to IU Columbus to continue his baseball career. He chose the Crimson Pride and coach Scott Bickel over offers from Franklin College and a few small colleges in Illinois.

“I didn’t want to go too far from home,” Hensley said. “Coach Bick is an amazing guy, so that was another reason that I wanted to stay.”

Because of the Celiac, Connor took classes online his final two years of high school.

“My mom and I went to my counselor, and we were like, ‘In-person is not working,’” Connor said. “My counselor said, ‘There is online school if you want to do that, so I switched to online school. So basically with that, you go through your home school, so I just went through North and I did online classes.”

At IUC, Conner figures most of his classes will be online. He plans to major in exercise science or business.

“With baseball, the majority of it will be online, and I’ve already talked to my counselor a little bit,” Hensley said. “The majority of them, you have the option to take online, but there are some that they don’t recommend. So I’ll do a majority online and maybe one or two classes inside where there’s like 10 or 15 people.”

Looking back, Hensley was pleased with what he and the Bull Dogs were able to do this season. North was ranked in the top 10 in the state for much of the season after beating a pair of top-five teams.

“We fell short of what we wanted to do with sectional and postseason play and all that, but realistically, when you look as the season we had — multiple ranked wins, conference, all that kind of stuff — we put together a good year,” Hensley said. “We just fell short of what we wanted to get in the end.”

The 2024 Republic All-Area Baseball team:

Connor Hensley, Columbus North: The senior led the Bull Dogs with a .456 average and 18 runs, had 12 RBIs and went 4-1 with a 1.02 ERA.

Brock Kintner, Columbus North: The sophomore batted .403 with 13 RBIs and 17 runs and went 2-0 pitching.

Ryan Rayburn, Columbus North: The senior went 5-2 with a 1.54 ERA.

Blake Osbourne, Columbus North: The senior went 2-2 with a 3.10 ERA and had nine RBIs and 11 runs.

Sam Perry, Columbus North: The sophomore batted .300 with four doubles, eight RBIs and 15 runs.

Blake Borkhardt, Columbus East: The senior led the Olympians with a .377 average, three home runs and 19 RBIs and had seven doubles and 13 runs.

Jackson Watkins, Columbus East: The junior batted .346 with seven doubles and seven RBIs and led the Olympians with 18 runs.

Simeon Wasil, Hauser: The junior batted .432 with two home runs and 41 runs, led the Jets with 35 RBIs and went 6-0 with a 1.86 ERA.

Holden Pittman, Hauser: The junior batted .434 with two home runs, 33 RBIs and 24 runs and went 4-5 with a 2.39 ERA.

Kam Blair, Hauser: The sophomore led the Jets with a .448 average and 34 RBIs; had seven doubles, one home run and 23 runs and went 2-0 with a 1.94 ERA.

Stryker Gill, Hauser: The sophomore batted .447 with two home runs, led the Jets with 12 doubles and 48 runs and went 2-3 with a 1.89 ERA.

Austin Byford, Jennings County: The senior led the Panthers with a .378 average and 19 runs and went 4-1 with a 1.26 ERA.

Cole Sigler, Jennings County: The senior led the Panthers with 17 RBIs and wenyt 3-3 with one save and a 3.24 ERA.

Devin Pate, South Decatur: The senior went 10-3 with a 1.47 ERA, batted .342 with 10 RBIs and 19 runs and led the Cougars with six doubles.

JP Scudder, South Decatur: The sophomore went 5-0 with an 0.91 ERA and batted 333 with 14 RBIs and 13 runs.

Avynn Whitaker, Edinburgh: The junior led the Lancers with a .411 average, eight doubles, one home run, 20 RBIs, 25 runs and 41 2/3 innings pitched.

Drake Goodpaster, Trinity Lutheran: The sophomore led the Cougars with a .342 average and 26 RBIs and scored 17 runs.

Honorable mention

Brown County: Mikey Kobiernik, Jack Sichting. Columbus Christian: Branson Carr, Cam Watts-Pritchard. Columbus East: Stone Myers, JD Rotert. Columbus North: Jayce Emmitt, Dillon James, Zach McLean. Edinburgh: Jared Myers. Hauser: Sam Louden. Jennings County: Sam Burkman. South Decatur: Corey Nugent, Colby Rathburn. Trinity Lutheran: Kowan Gross, Peyton Pollert, Jackson Trueblood.