The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Keystone standout picks BG
Keystone’s Nathan Archer hasn’t started his senior year of high school yet.
However, he already knows where he’ll be headed.
The soon-to-be senior Wildcats baseball player announced on Twitter on June 29 he will be continuing his academic and athletic careers at Bowling Green.
“It’s definitely a big weight off my shoulders,” Archer said. “It’s nice to know what my future is going to look like and know that I’m going to a good place. I’m excited.”
With the spring high school sports season being canceled because of concerns brought on by the novel coronavirus, Archer missed out on his junior season. A season in which Keystone coach Bert Fitzgerald was looking forward to seeing Archer play.
“We were really looking forward to having him,” Fitzgerald said. “As a junior, this would have been his third year on varsity. We were really looking forward to what he had to offer.”
This isn’t the first time Archer has faced adversity. He suffered an elbow injury during his freshman season that required a lengthy rehab process.
“In his freshman season, he was a little banged up coming into the season and was going through some treatment to be able to play again,” Fitzgerald said. “Once he was able to play, we wanted to move him up to varsity right away. However, we couldn’t play him in any of the non-throwing positions like his doctor wanted. We needed him to be in the outfield and it was kind of funny: We had to convince his mother and we told her we would not let him throw a guy out from the outfield, so he wouldn’t hurt his arm.”
Fitzgerald saw Archer’s talent and knew he was a valuable asset to the Wildcats. Because of this, he made sure to get Archer into the lineup despite not being able to throw the ball much because if his injury.
“He’s so quick on the step in the outfield to get to and run down balls,” he said. “He’s a fast individual, and his bat is great. He was one of our best nine as a freshman so as soon as he was able to play, we got him in the lineup. His sophomore year, he did great. He was way ahead for a sophomore and what he could have done this year ... it’s unfortunate we didn’t get to see that.”
Archer looked at a few Division II schools before ultimately deciding on Bowling Green, a school he had his eye on for a while.
“I’ve been interested in them for a while,” Archer said. “It’s not too far from home, it’s a great atmosphere and I like what they are doing there. It’s a great fit for me, and my family liked it because they can come and see me play. All of those reasons helped make the decision pretty easy.”
Bowling Green announced it was cutting its baseball program in late May. A few weeks later, the program was reinstated after a fundraising effort by an alumni group. Archer was following the developments with the program very closely.
“It was definitely tough to hear that they lost their program, but finding out that they got it back was really nice,” Archer said. “It shows that their program is really well-followed by their alumni and their alumni enjoy the program. It seems like a good program to be a part of.”
Archer is anticipating a big senior year next spring and can’t wait to get going.
“We’d definitely like to win the district championship next year,” Archer said. “We lost that last year, and we were really looking to get it back this year and make a deep playoff run. Doing that and winning conference is going to be pretty important to us as well as trying to win as many ball games as we can.”