LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – After reaching the Division 2 junior college World Series last season, the Lansing Community College baseball team is motivated to get back.
With a 3-1 win over Lake Michigan College, on April 8, the Stars successfully put together a 20-game winning streak.
A big reason for the success has to do with freshman pitcher Hunter Shaw, who joined LCC as a preferred walk-on.
“I don’t know that we knew he was going to be this good,” LCC second year baseball coach Steven Cutter said. “He’s obviously developed a lot since August, when he got here. He’s grown, he’s gotten stronger, his velocity is up quite a bit.
The reason Shaw is the ‘6 Sports Player of the Week’ is because of his two starts, when he pitched a combined 12 innings, struck out 18 batters, allowed zero runs, and two hits.
On the season, Shaw is 3-1 with an ERA of 0.35 in 25.2 innings pitched.
“We do a lot of mental performance here and that aspect in baseball is something I had no idea about, coming out of high school,” Shaw said. “We never did that at Chelsea (High School). We did that here with Brian Cane. We did mental performance every day and that kind of stuff really helped me.”
While mental performance is something new to Shaw this season, it’s not the first time he’s used his mental strength to help him in athletics. As a senior in high school, Shaw hit the game-winning field goal to give Chelsea the Division 4 football state championship.
“Funny enough, I was doing some breathing techniques and visioning the field goal going through before I knew what all that kind of stuff was,” Shaw said.
Cutter said, “When they’re able to do that in tough situations, emotionally charged… and they’re as calm as the other side of the pillow, it’s just one of those things where you just know he’s going to be just fine.”
