christian young '17 Recruiting Profile

I was born and raised in the Tampa Bay area and at four years old I began to play the greatest sport known to man (baseball) at South Brandon Little League. Being that I grew up in Florida, I have played year-round every year since I started. To share some insight about my character on and off the field, I have always been extremely hard on myself and very rarely take the easy route, which, to me personally, means that when I make a mistake, I am the first to recognize the error, if I fail to perform, I get onto myself, not because I am afraid of hurting my personal batting average, on base percentage, etc…, but because I know that I had the opportunity to help my team and put them in a better position to win a ball game and I failed to execute. I also try to make everything a competition whether it’s against myself or another person; in practice I go all out, no matter what, my current teammates make fun of me for diving for balls during pregame BP but I always tell them “How do you expect me to make the play for you in the game if you don’t want me to practice it every chance I get?” My coaches call me a weirdo because of my out of the ordinary approaches to practicing which is mainly because I live by the code “practice how you play” which I take to the extent of doing my tee work with my helmet on and going 100% in everything whether or not there is anything at stake. In my collegiate career I not only wish to build up a sufficient reputation to move onto the next level in baseball, but I also wish to do everything it takes to make my team and my self the best we can possibly be in any way shape or form. Although I would love to play baseball professionally, I realize that only a very select few get that honor, and know that I have to complete my education with a solid career in mind, I have always felt that a career in medicine, in some capacity, would be interesting and have, more recently, been considering becoming a pharmacist. As I stated earlier, taking the easy road has rarely occurred. In kindergarten, I was placed in the “gifted” AGP program-and throughout middle school I was taking honors classes. For the past three years, I have been enrolled in the most difficult program high schools have to offer internationally, the IB Program at Strawberry Crest High School. Although the program is very challenging, especially being that I have baseball practice and games five to six days a week, I have maintained a GPA above 4.5. the one thing that my teachers and coaches will tell you is that I work hard and try to do my best in every situation.