The Kentucky Wildcats will have yet another 7-footer on campus next season.
That sentence in itself is nothing unusual as John Calipari has reeled in big men at an alarming pace during his tenure at UK. The only thing is, this 7-footer will actually be a pitcher on the UK baseball team.
Sean Hjelle, a 7-foot pitcher, committed to the Wildcats back in August. Hjelle throws a two-seam fastball, a four-seam fastball, a changeup and a cutter. His fastball has been clocked at 90 mph a few times but normally sits in the mid-80s.
Proud to say that I have officially committed to play baseball at the University of Kentucky. #gowildcats
— Sean Hjelle (@TheHjelleBean) August 14, 2014
Twincities.com has an update on Hjelle, who is currently averaged 15.2 points and 10.5 rebounds per game for his high school’s basketball team. It turns out that Hjelle had an Anthony Davis-like growth spurt in the 8th grade. Here is an excerpt:
Hjelle always was one of the tallest kids in his class, but he really started to stick out after a massive growth spurt in eighth grade. He stood 6 feet at the start of that year and by year’s end had grown eight inches.
“He was always abnormally tall, and then he hit that growth spurt and he was on a whole different level,” said Hjelle’s best friend, Sam Mustar.
“It was pretty hard to buy clothes after that,” Hjelle said. Hjelle always has stood out when playing sports. He played soccer as a kid and dabbled in football in middle school. He says he also was “pretty decent” at bowling. That said, he’s been a two-sport athlete since he arrived at Mahtomedi High School — with baseball a firm No. 1.
“Not a lot of people my size play baseball,” Hjelle said. “I always tell people that, though I love basketball, baseball is really my passion. It’s my life.”
That made his decision easy when schools began to contact him about scholarships. “It was kind of a blur,” Hjelle said. “It was a crazy process, and I met a lot of really cool people, and I’m very happy with my decision.”
“He’d come to me and say, ‘I just turned Notre Dame down,’ or something like that,” Mustar said. “And I’d be like, ‘Did you tell them about me?’ It’s been crazy just seeing him go through this. He’s living the dream.”
Any chance we can add Hjelle to the basketball team as a walk on?
