Thomas Matthes earns All-Conference honors

Thomas Matthes loves baseball, admitting it’s his favorite sport. The fact that he has played it from Little League until now should attest to that. If the recent start to his high school varsity career is any indication, who knows what else might be ahead for him. He completed his freshman season by being named to the Second Team for the Top of Iowa Conference, which is pretty heady stuff for a player after just his first year at that level. In fact, very few Ninth graders are chosen for that honor in any given year as the majority of them are either on a JV or JJV team exclusively.

“It was a cool feeling,” said Matthes when asked for his initial reaction to the news. “Some friends have been asking me before if I thought I would get first team, but this is still pretty nice.” While he readily admits that this year’s team was really young, he expected them to have a decent season. “Now that we’ve gotten all this experience already, I think by my senior year we should be pretty good.”,p> Consider these numbers, Matthes as a freshman led the team in batting with a .377 average and a .435 slugging percentage. He also led in total hits with 26 in 69 at-bats. To top it off, he contributed to one of the two team wins as a pitcher. He completed his all-around game with a top four fielding percentage (.942).

“We should be better next year,” said Matthes. “I felt my season was okay. The team camaraderie was good, as these guys were all my friends growing up so we knew each other pretty good. The seniors (Nick, Peyton, Leo) were also giving us great leadership. We learned a lot from them.”

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