By Maggie Hannon |
The glamor of the red carpet and the grittiness of athletics are two things that people wouldn’t normally associate with each other. On March 9, though, freshman pitcher Austin Kelly walked the red carpet for his nomination and win at the Nike sponsored Oregon Sports Awards (OSA) for the best Prep Baseball Player of 2013. This win was for his work during his senior year at Clackamas High School.
The televised, red carpet event was hosted by Oregon native and SportsCenter anchor Neil Everett who awarded high school, college and professional athletes at the Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton. This is the second year that the OSA decided to put more of a focus on high school athletes and expanded the award categories in order to include more high school winners.
Kelly beat out over 70 nominees and two other finalists from Sheldon and Clackamas high school, who were also former club teammates. It was not until Kelly was called up on stage that he knew he won the award.“I was pretty excited because it was one of the biggest awards that I’d gotten that year,” Kelly said. “It looked like the Academy Awards, like they call you up on stage and give you an award. It was really well done.”
Kelly also won the award for Gatorade’s Oregon Baseball Player of the Year.
Since senior catcher Bo Cornish saw Kelly play during his senior year of high school, Cornish was not totally surprised that Kelly had won the award. Cornish and pitching coach Larry Cassian attended a showcase for seniors last spring. Cassian could not stay to watch Kelly pitch, but he told Cornish to text him if Cornish thought he could throw for the UP team.“He goes in there and I think in the first three batters he faced, they were playing with wood bats, and he broke three bats,” Cornish said, “I saw him throw a couple pitches and it was great. I knew immediately he could throw for us.”
Now that Kelly is a Pilot, he is setting his focus on pitching more than hitting, although he did both in high school. Kelly has noticed a change in his pitching style, relying more on defense by pitching to contact rather than focusing on strikeouts
Cassian, who Kelly noted as one of the reasons he decided to play for UP, also noticed some improvement in Kelly’s pitching style and his value as a pitcher for the team.
“We’ve got him more just pitching, right now we need him more on the mound,” Cassian said. “So he’s made some big strides. He’s changed some arm action, his arm angle, and it’s made his pitching a little better.”
Kelly likes to keep his energy light before games in order to stay relaxed and not get too tight in his pitching. Cornish and Cassian found that Kelly had a lot of confidence for such a young player on the team and saw Kelly’s maturity in his carefree attitude.
“He brings a presence where he almost seems like a veteran the way he goes out there and throws and he’s not scared of anybody,” Cornish said. “We went and played UCLA who won the national championship last year and he went in and played like they were just another team of just nobodys.”
Although the team is not doing as well as Kelly would hope, he is optimistic for the future and the rest of conference play.
“We’ve got a lot of young guys on the team doing well. We may not be having the best year right now but in the future we’ll be good, and we still have conference play which we can turn around very fast.” Kelly said.
While playing for UP, Kelly has some broad goals for his baseball career.
“I’d like to just keep being a leader on the team. From a team aspect, I’d like to get a conference championship and I think we can do that in the next couple years,” Kelly said.
