I am Iron Man: Camp Point Central’s Petersen toughs out streak of consecutive games catching

CAMP POINT, Ill. — It takes a certain toughness to play catcher.

As Camp Point Central freshman infielder Caleb Petersen put it, “There’s no such thing as a good sissy catcher.”

His older brother is as tough as they come and has an iron man streak to prove it. Cole Petersen, a senior, has caught every game, every inning and every pitch for the Camp Point Central baseball team since the first game of his freshman season in 2021.

That’s 91 games, 573 innings and 11,081 pitches.

With all the foul tips, pitches in the dirt and general wear and tear catchers endure, how has Petersen been able to gear up and show up behind the plate every game despite all the bumps and bruises?

The answer is quite simple.

“Just devoting time to good recovery, getting good sleep,” he said. “I work really hard to make sure I’m ready for each season.”

His mother, Lacey Petersen, helped instill that work ethic.

“Cole wants to be the best, and he set out a long time ago, deciding ‘catching is what I want to do, and I want to play college baseball,’” said Lacey, who played softball at Culver-Stockton College. “I told him, ‘Bud, you can do it. I have no doubt that you have the talent to do it. You can do it, but it doesn’t just happen.’ It takes work, it takes dedication. If you’re dedicated to do it, that’s fine, but if you sit back and you’re not doing the extra work, then you can’t expect good things to happen.”

That extra work included hitting and fielding sessions in the backyard, long hours at the batting cages and engaging in a brotherly rivalry.

“We try to make things into a competition back home when we’re working on things,” Cole said. “That gives you that edge, and I think it helps make us both better in the end.”

Panthers coach Jordan Tenhouse has seen those long hours of practice come to fruition, as he knows he can pencil Cole’s name into the lineup every game.

“I probably won’t realize how valuable he is until he’s gone,” Tenhouse said. “We’ve offered him days off. We’ve offered him, ‘hey, we’ve got four games in three days. Do you want a game off?’ and he says, ‘heck no, heck no.’ There’s never a question. Cole’s going to be back there.”

Amidst all that practice and competition, the brothers have always made sure to have some fun.

“We used to have full-on wiffle ball tournaments,” Caleb said. “Cole would have all his friends over, and I’d have all my friends over.”

Their mother, who is an associate professor at the Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing & Health Sciences, had the luxury of being home in the summer to oversee things.

“As kids do in small towns, when you’re looking for something to do, you congregate and you start wiffle ball in the backyard,” Lacey Petersen said. “The Petersen house was a common location for that. We had all the dirt spots exactly where all the bases were.”