Jackson Kea '17 Recruiting Profile

Athletics

I love sports and I love to compete, but baseball has always been my favorite sport.  I’ve been playing baseball since I was four years old and I cannot imagine life without baseball.  I’m working hard year round not only to improve my baseball knowledge but also to improve my physical and mental strength, speed and agility.  This includes participation in baseball camps and personal training programs as well as maintaining an ongoing workout schedule that includes core fitness for overall stamina, strength and agility, weightlifting and speed training.

My favorite position is catcher and I want to find a college team where I can use my leadership skills, baseball knowledge, quickness and toughness to make an immediate impact behind the plate and help my team win.   I excel at receiving and blocking behind the plate and I work hard to help my pitcher get strikes and my team get outs.  I can stick with a pitcher that is struggling to throw strikes; one who is bouncing ball after ball into the ground in front me or throwing them over my head.  I know when to call time and talk to them and I know when they have had enough.  I work hard to learn my pitcher’s strengths and weaknesses and help them be successful by making the best pitch calls possible and positioning myself behind the plate to their advantage. My quickness allows me to get to wild pitches and make an attempt to get runners out as well as get to pop fouls and make the catch.  I have worked hard to improve my arm strength and pop times so I can catch runners stealing and leaning too far off base.

I am PHYSICALLY and MENTALLY tough!  I once played in a tournament where I was the only catcher and I played every inning of every game of the two doubleheaders we played…in heat in excess of 95 degrees!  I loved it and my coaches loved it!  I love being able to take a foul ball and shake it off and get back to it.  I’ve been run over several times and stayed in the game.  I love making plays at the plate and I love throwing out runners.  No matter what the conditions or situation, I want to be the one behind the plate and the one to strap on the gear!

Academics

Academically, I am looking for colleges that have engineering or pre-engineering degree programs.  I intend to major in either civil or mechanical engineering because I love to design and build things that require me to use different types of tools and assembly techniques.  It’s fun imagining what something will look like when it’s finished and trying to visualize how all the different components will come together to create the final product.

As a freshman, I took Introduction to Engineering Design and loved it!  In this course, we learned how to use Computer Aided and Design (CAD) to create 3D digital prototypes used in the design, visualization and simulation of products.  I already have significant experience using Autodesk Inventor CAD software and Autodesk Revit Building Information Modeling software and I want to take my knowledge to the next level.  I am planning on taking the second course in this sequence, Principles of Engineering, during my senior year.  I will be working hard over the next two years to improve my knowledge of math and science so that I can graduate with grades that will allow me to be accepted into the engineering program of the school I choose to attend.