COLUMBUS — Cincinnati Country Day's Division IV state baseball championship helped senior Matt Cohen end the year on a high note. Just four months ago, Cohen was dealing with a family tragedy.

        “I'm a little richer,” said Cohen, the team's center fielder. “I bet my brothers (A.J. and Dustin) that we would win the state championship. I guess Dustin's going to have to pay for A.J.”

        A.J. Cohen, who was a football player for the University of Dayton, died in a December apartment fire near the UD campus.

        “I knew we were going to win when we arrived,” said Kim Cohen, Matt's father and a CCD assistant coach. “We got off the expressway at Exit 89, which was A.J.'s football number at Dayton. I then looked up on the scoreboard and saw the letters A.J.”

        Those letters were on an advertisement on the top of the center-field scoreboard at Cooper Stadium. It read, “A.J. Wright” on the top line with “coming this fall” on the lower line.

        “My brothers both played on the Summit Country Day baseball team that won the 1995 state championship,” Matt Cohen said. “I remember the championship game very well, because I was the bat boy.”

        Kim Cohen was an assistant under SCD coach Jeff Slayton in 1995. He transferred as an assistant to CCD four years ago when Matt enrolled at the private school in Indian Hill.

        “It's been a very difficult year for the family and my wife, Diana,” Kim Cohen said. “We're a very sports-minded family, which helped us get through it.”

        Dustin, who played football at Miami University, is attending the St. Louis Rams' summer workouts and was unable to make it to the game Saturday.

        “That's going to be one of the many telephone calls we'll make tonight (to Dustin),” Kim Cohen said.

        Two other CCD players also were affected by a death in the family.

        “Noah's (Allen) mother died and Brett (Smith) also lost his grandfather,” CCD coach Tim Dunn said. “We didn't talk a lot about it.”

        CCD will graduate six seniors — Smith, Cohen, Allen, Roman Duty, Tyler Wright and Joel Ellison.

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