The numbers are staggering -- way beyond the expectations of NCAA baseball rookie Jared Young.
Through 41 games this season as a freshman infielder for the Minot State Beavers in North Dakota, Young has a team-leading .415 batting average, with 61 hits, 18 doubles and four home runs.
Hitting third in the order, he leads the Beavers with a .646 slugging percentage (total bases reached divided by total at-bats) and sports a team-high .463 on-base percentage. He's also batted in 34 runs.
Not bad for a 19-year-old kid from Prince George.
"I've never hit this well, especially since it's pretty good ball in the NCAA, and I didn't expect it coming in," said Young. "Offensively it's been unreal all year."
Young spent a lot of time in the off-season working indoors on his swing with Minor State hitting coach Patrick Arntson, working in the batting cage for at least an hour each day in the morning before classes. The results were noticeable right from the start of the season on the Beavers' first road trip to Las Vegas. In conference play, Young's .402 batting average ranks seventh overall in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference.
"It's just hitting my pitch and being relaxed in the box -- we worked on that all winter," said Young. "I really worked at getting stronger over the winter and I was pretty excited for this year hoping everything would go my way. Coming into the season, it seemed I was ready to go by the time the season started. The pitching is pretty good. There's nobody who's really overpowering; they're just really accurate and have a lot of pitches."
Young hits ahead of cleanup hitter Jordan Schulz, a Canadian junior national team member from of Strasbourg, Sask., and the two have become good buddies. Schulz, a sophomore, leads the Beavers with 14 home runs and 42 RBI. Young has scored 18 of his team's 176 runs this season.
Having grown up playing second base and pitching, Young wasn't at all comfortable when the Beavers had him playing third base. Most of his 15 errors happened while he was covering third. Since he made the switch to second, 20 games into the season, his fielding percentage (.894) has steadily climbed.
"They started me off at third base and I'd never played there before," said Young. "I'm a bigger kid (six-foot-two, 175 pounds) so they figured I'd be a good fit at third but it didn't really pan out. Since I was swinging well, I just asked if I could move over to second base where I'm comfortable and like playing and I just love it now.
"It was night and day. Defensively, as of late, I've been playing pretty well."
Young also pitched while growing up in Prince George and when he played last season in the B.C. Premier Baseball League with the Okanagan Athletics but has just mound one appearance this season. In a game in Arizona he pitched two innings against Simpson College, picking up five strikeouts and allowing just one hit.
"Maybe next year I'll throw more but I kind of told them I didn't really want to," said Young.
The only downer for Young is Minot State's record. The Beavers are 8-22-0 in NSIC games and 11-30-0 overall. They just finished an eight-game roadtrip and end the season with a four-game series against Minnesota-Duluth today and Saturday. Minot State ranks 12th in the 15-team NSIC and will miss the playoffs.
"I wish we'd had a better year but there's nothing you can do about it now now," said Young. "I'm really optimistic about next year, we have a lot of good guys coming in."
Young plans to play in the Prince George Senior Baseball League this summer but doesn't know which team will hold his rights.
He's just wrapping up his classes, majoring in energy economics and finance. The Prince George secondary school graduate says he loves campus life.
"It's pretty cool just being an NCAA athlete, they treat you really well, Im having a good time with it," said Young, who will return to Prince George May 15. "I'm doing really well in school, I had a 3.8 GPA the first semester, my GPA's up there. It's a relief to my coaches and myself. If I go on the road my teachers aren't worried about it and trust me."
