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Message: [QUOTE="manleyzoo, post: 2968312, member: 519"] He blew out his knee with an ACL at the end of his soph year and missed his whole junior year. Off the table went D1 scholarship offers to a number of Pac 12 schools, the two Arizona schools, Oregon and maybe 10 others. He had a really good senior season, returned to his earlier level but the heavy verbal commitment period for baseball is the summer after the junior year. After that the recruiters fill mostly by need at certain positions. He ended up playing D3 ball at Willamette in Oregon, a small liberal arts school that plays in a really good conference. There's no athletic scholarships at that level but somehow, miraculously they came up with 90% of his tuition, room and board, books, fees, etc. as an inducement to sign. He got recruiting interest at that level and at D2 and at some lower level D1 schools but he was cool with where he was. In baseball, a lot of D1 guys that ran into something like he did play at lower levels as freshmen and then transfer to a D1 school. He started at 2B as a freshman, really hard to do in college, and was offered at D1 the end of that year. But by that time, he liked it where he was and stayed. They play 40 games between late Feb and late April so they're grinding it out, conditioning and hitting in the off season and jamming when the grass is green. He got on the field as a freshman because in the fall he beat out the returner and another freshman, he put up good numbers at the plate, was solid in the field, kept his head down and his mouth shut and just played. In a word, he made it hard for the coach to sit him. That's what getting on the field in college is all about...make it hard for the coach to sit you. In his soph year, he showed more pop, got his legs back and had himself a helluva year. And then in the fall of his junior year, torn cartilage in the same knee got him and he became a full time student. [/QUOTE]

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