Here are the News and Notes for July 4th from Across the Nation.
Former BYU two-sport athlete and Chicago Cubs prospect Hannemann doesn’t regret serving LDS mission
At age 26, Iowa Cubs center fielder Jacob Hannemann knows he’s an older prospect coming off an injury, but that doesn’t mean he regrets taking two years off to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“I’m very grateful for my mission and grateful that I chose to go,” Hannemann told the Des Moines Register. “I’m happy with my choice.”
Hannemann, who played football and baseball at Brigham Young University, was recently featured by the Des Moines Register, where he discussed his mission and its impact on his professional baseball career.
Culture and gut: Ray Tanner and hiring coaches
When Ray Tanner was hired as South Carolina’s athletics director in the summer of 2012, he inherited a department that was on extremely solid footing in terms of major sports coaches (for the purposes of this piece, we define major sports as football, baseball and men’s and women’s basketball).
Steve Spurrier had just led the football program to its first of three straight 11-win seasons, Frank Martin and Dawn Staley were in the early stages of building the basketball programs and Tanner elected to promote top assistant Chad Holbrook to lead the baseball program.
Prairie Ridge grad Austin Covers transfers to Division I East Carolina
When 2014 Prairie Ridge graduate Austin Covers sat down with Heartland Community College baseball coach Brian Furlong to talk about Division I colleges, Covers identified East Carolina as his No. 1 choice.
A few months later, Covers committed to play at East Carolina.
The left-handed pitcher played one year at Heartland in Normal after two injury-riddled seasons at Southern Illinois in Carbondale. Covers rebounded to post a 4-3 record with a 1.80 ERA in 45 innings pitched. He struck out 31 batters and walked 14.
LSU’s Duplantis To Wear No. 8 in 2018
BATON ROUGE, La. – LSU outfielder Antoine Duplantis will wear jersey No. 8 for the 2018 season, coach Paul Mainieri announced on Monday. The No. 8 jersey is given each season to the upperclassman who exemplifies the spirit of LSU Baseball through his leadership and dedication to the program.
The No. 8 tradition was started by outfielder Mikie Mahtook (2009-11) and has since been continued by first baseman Mason Katz (2012-13), shortstop Alex Bregman (2014-15), outfielder Jake Fraley (2016) and second baseman Cole Freeman (2017).
Injury prevention starts early, college baseball coaches say; targeted training, team depth provide assists
Alex Lange doesn’t worry. If you’re scared of getting hurt, he says, you can’t do your job. But he knows the risk.
The LSU ace — a first-round pick of the Chicago Cubs — has grown up during an epidemic of arm injuries. Teenage pitchers are having Tommy John surgery at alarming rates. Major league franchises are losing some of their top investments for nine to 12 months.
Lange, a 6-foot-3 righty who mixes a mid-90s fastball with a devastating curveball, said he and his peers are flirting with the laws of nature.
