Villas commits to play for NPC
Lakeside senior Jordan Villas recently confirmed his decision to play baseball for National Park College next spring.
The future Nighthawk has been playing baseball since he was 4 years old and “putting all my work into it.”
“It’s always been my dream to go play college baseball and even higher,” the Rams third baseman said. “Right when I saw the text I got up and showed my dad. … He’s always pushed me and made me keep playing. I’m gonna go there, just give it my all and hopefully do the best I can doing anything for the team.”
Head coach Garrett Bock, who was promoted last week from the assistant position he held for the past two seasons, praised Villas’ work ethic.
“Jordan was a very hard worker for us, especially defensively,” he noted. “He was very fun to watch. … He competed each day, and he really earned a scholarship — a spot, which not a lot of people can say that they can do. I’ve watched Jordan grow since he was a 10th grader into a very, very, very good defensive third baseman. He played for his teammates. We talked about protecting the pitcher, and he always did that.”
“Jordan’s a pretty tough kid, and he was always a very steady force through the lineup,” former Rams head coach Leighton Hardin agreed. “At practice or if we were hitting [batting practice] or anything, he’d be at third base and our guys would just hit shot after shot after shot. He’d just never blink an eye. He was just steady, in tough plays he was gonna make them. … When [we were] trying to have a big inning in the first inning, when [we had] two guys on [with] two outs, and he comes up to hit fifth, that’s a spot we wanted him to be in. … I think he was ready to have a pretty good year. He was swinging the bat really well.”
One of the biggest moments of the season for Villas came in the Rams’ season opener against Bryant, a 15-0 perfect game on the road.
“JV made two really big plays to keep that going,” Hardin explained. “The first one came in the fifth inning [when] someone hit a ball hard to his left that should have been a base hit and he made a diving play, picked the ball up and threw the guy out at first on what would probably, any other day, [have been] a base hit. To end the game they put a pinch hitter in from the left side, and he hit a pop-up down to thirdbase line, and Jordan opened up, ran 50-60 feet, made a catch over the shoulder that caused him to fall down.
“It may have been the best play I’ve seen anyone make since I’ve been here, and that was the final out of the game. … Earlier in that game, too, in the first four innings there were no hits on either side. He drove their pitcher’s pitchcount up in the second inning with his at-bat. He ended up drawing a walk, but I think he had like a nine or 10-pitch at-bat, and their pitcher got to 70 pitches by the fourth inning which took him out of the game, [giving] us the opportunity to break the game open.”
Villas was surprised to have made his first play in the game.
“I just had to lay out for it,” he said. “I remember I felt it hit my glove and — I honestly didn’t know I had it, so then I got up and just threw him out. I threw a one-hop to Gage [Golden], and I was like, ‘Oh crap!’ Then he just dug it, and I was like, ‘Thank goodness.’
“The second one was the last out of the game, and I think [the batter] was a lefty. He hit the ball I don’t know how far in foul territory past third, but I just remember I ran for a long time, and I just hear my catcher yelling, ‘You’ve got room!’, so I just slide on my knee and catch it over [my shoulder] running towards the outfield. That was by far my favorite play.”
Bock said that Villas was always the kind of
player that was a positive role model for his younger teammates.
“He showed up to work every day, he was ready to work, he was always focused, and he gave great effort,” he said. “That’s what we ask out of our guys, and he was a great example for our younger kids. They looked up to all of our seniors, but they saw something in Jordan — the way he went about his work that we really were seeing the younger guys take after. It’s a shame that he didn’t get to finish out his senior year.”
Villas said that Hardin instilled the idea in him of his team being a family and that you always take care of your family.
“What I learned from coach Hardin, he always [said], ‘It’s family first. You take care of whoever’s on that field with you, in the workout room — no matter where you are — just take care of your team and don’t let anything happen to them. If they’re going down, you help them.’ It’s just family,” he said.
Bock said that he anticipates seeing Villas teach his new teammates at NPC next year.
“I think he will eventually teach the players around him like he taught our younger guys,” he said. “He didn’t say a whole lot, and he never has, but his actions and how he went about himself did a lot more than speaking could ever d0.
“And I think that’s what he’ll bring to the program [at NPC]. They’ll see that he’s kind of a blue collar kid who works hard every day. … People see that, and to us as a program, that helps a whole lot more than people always talking. He did it by his actions, how he played the game and how he showed up every day.”