Needed Change: Maple Mountain’s Kavyn Carter pitches his team to a big 5-0 win over Salem Hills
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- Maple Mountain’s Kavyn Carter pitched a complete game shutout over Salem Hills on Monday. April 6, 2026
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- Maple Mountain’s Jeremiah Hall slugged a big home run for his team during a 5-0 win over Salem Hills. April 6, 2026
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- Salem Hills’ pitcher Porter Howard pitched four strong innings during his team’s 5-0 loss to Maple Mountain. April 6, 2026
A changeup can be a devastating pitch.
When executed well, the changeup can leave opposing hitters flailing away away at assumed fastballs while helping pitchers get themselves out of jams.
Such was the case for Maple Mountain’s Kavyn Carter during a big region matchup versus Salem Hills on Monday.
Locked in a scoreless tie in the top of the fourth inning, and with the Skyhawks presenting runners on second and third base with just one out, the Golden Eagle junior pitcher needed a strikeout. After dealing a fastball that missed the strike zone, Carter opted to throw three straight changeups, all of which forced swings of the bat way ahead of the pitch for the critical out. The next batter flew out and Maple Mountain was out of the inning and ended the scoring threat, just like that.
“The change was working today,” Carter said. “It’s a good pitch for me and it usually works well for me. It worked well today.”
Carter pitching out of that jam seemed to ignite the Golden Eagle bats with Mitch Walker and Lincoln Beenfield stringing together RBI hits in the bottom half of the fourth to put their team up 3-0. The next inning saw sophomore Jeremiah Hall hit a towering home run for two more runs and a 5-0 lead, which proved to be the final score.
“It was a huge momentum swing for us,” said Maple Mountain coach Jeremy Thomas. “When you have a pitcher who does that, it fires up everybody. You then get some guys on base and then Jeremiah, who was able to sit on a hanging curve and hit that thing out … We just rolled after that, it seemed.”
As for Carter’s performance, it was the type of pitching Thomas has relied on throughout his tenure at Maple Mountain.
“We focus on pitching and defense. That’s what’s been big for us and that’s what we did really well today,” Thomas said. “We weren’t perfect. We misplayed some fly-balls, and there’s always stuff to work on, but Kavyn was big for us today.”
As for Carter, and his pitching arsenal that includes what can be a devastating changeup, a lot of work has gone into arriving at the point where it can truly confound opposing batters at the plate.
“He’s gotten to the point where he can throw that with almost the same exact action as he throws his fastball, which is the key to any great changeup,” Thomas said. “He can throw it at any point in the count, too, which is really big. So we called three straight changeups in that fourth inning, and he threw each of them really well, which we knew he could.”
Although it’s early in the season, Monday’s win over Salem Hills was a big one as Thomas’s team sets out to take on what is always a stacked Region 7.
“It was already a really tough and competitive region, and now we add a great team like Pleasant Grove, so it becomes that much tougher,” Thomas said. “There’s eight pitchers in this region that are committed to Division One colleges, so that’s just an example of how high the level of play is in this region. So when you’re facing those type of arms it’s going to be a battle every single day.”
The win over Salem Hills sets Maple Mountain in the right direction as it attempts to take the state championship it seemed primed to do last season. Entering the 5A tournament as the overwhelming favorite last season, the Golden Eagles ran into an extremely hot Spanish Fork team that eventually took them out of the tournament on its way to a state championship crown.
“Spanish Fork got really hot and made a great run, but it still gnaws on me that we weren’t able to get it done last year,” Thomas said. “But I feel things are coming together well. We went into this season confident in our defense and pitching, but a little concerned about our ability to score runs. But so far we’ve been able to respond well from the plate and put up a lot of runs. So I’m very happy about that.”
With the win Maple Mountain improved to 12-2 on the season and 3-0 in Region 7 play.
