Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Bulls-Eye: Pearson Finds Window Of Opportunity
PRAIRIE GROVE PITCHER SIGNED BY CBC
PRAIRIE GROVE — Coach Chris Mileham had a front-row seat witnessing D.J. Pearson’s development into an “impact player” on the baseball diamond for the Prairie Grove Tigers.
High school coaches don’t publicly call out scores of players, who simply won’t aim high enough to reach their potential, but when a kid like Pearson transforms himself from a bench player to college prospect few things at the high school level exceed that excitement.
Pearson signed a national letter of intent to play college baseball for Central Baptist College of Conway, at the Prairie Grove High School cafeteria on July 19.
“This was the best thing I’ve heard all summer,” Mileham said. “I’ve enjoyed the summer with my family, and with my wife and my kid; but when we got the news on D.J. that just made my summer to see him get the opportunity to go on.”
Prior to his senior season at Prairie Grove High School in 2018, in which Pearson became the Tigers’ No. 1 pitcher by season’s end and threw the most pitches of anyone on Prairie Grove’s roster with 756, he wasn’t on anyone’s radar as a college prospect. Realizing he was the only one, who could change that Pearson elevated baseball among his priorities. Although he also played basketball as a senior and displayed dynamic improvement in that sport as well, Pearson kept his sights focused on pursuit of a college baseball career, and maybe something beyond.
“It’s more of a business decision because I know I can play basketball at the next level,” Pearson said of choosing baseball, which typically affords a longer playing career. “In baseball you can (play) 20 seasons easy if you’re healthy.”
Mileham can attest to Pearson’s intentionality, describing Thursday’s signing as “a top three reward for a high school coach.”
“It’s one of the big reasons I came here and I will always use my resources to help young men get opportunities that are available to them,” Mileham said. “It’s well-deserved, they say you work for everything you get, this is a perfect example of a person that commits to doing the work and receiving the benefits from it. It’s a classic story, classic case, I never get tired of telling that story.”
“D.J. was like the one-player
away, what do they call it in basketball? The sixth guy, the first one off the bench,” Mileham said of Pearson’s junior season, explaining, “He kind of played that role his junior year. To be honest with you, along with his hard work, he was being in the right place at the right time and the opportunity was there for it to be his, his position, his team, and he took the ball and ran with it. So, you love to see that. By far the biggest surprise of the year, a pleasant surprise. I’ve loved to watch him play the last three years, and I’m really excited to hear about the next four.”
Pearson attributed his improvement to playing summer baseball two seasons with high school teammates and summer basketball last year with the Arkansas Wings, noting the high school game for each sport is much slower than the pace played in AAU ball.
“Really, the biggest thing was confidence,” Pearson said. “I really had to believe in myself to be successful.”
Mileham has been heavily involved with offseason baseball until this summer. The previous two summers, Mileham and his assistants had personally toted around Pearson and any Prairie Grove kids that were ready to want to play at that level and get that kind of experience; and were committed to put in that kind of work all summer long. Mileham admits, “Our summer program is thicker than the spring program here.”
“Before D.J. really sold out after his junior year and committed himself to working out in the offseason, it took us about half a regular high school baseball season for him to finally get up to speed,” Mileham said. “It’s kind of like getting your legs underneath you on the basketball court as soon you come off the gridiron. Getting in baseball shape is the same theory as that. But like I said, this year, he was committed. He kind of had a plan and knew what he wanted to do, and put in the extra work on the side.”
On the field dividends were big.
Playing in 31 games, Pearson started 8 games on the mound, posting a 2.12 earned-run average with a 5-2 record. He threw 43 innings, the second most of any Tiger. Pearson was edged out by Garrett Heltemes, who led the team with 43.2. Pearson allowed 30 runs on 39 hits, but only 13 runs were earned. His strike-out (47) to base-on-balls (26) ratio was nearly 2-1. Pearson faced 207 batters with 174 at-bats. He limited wild pitches to 3, and only hit 7 batters with pitches.
“Man, I’ve not seen a young man impacted the way it impacted him probably in five years,” Mileham said. “His devotion and his dedication to playing in our summer program, as well as pitching bullpens in the offseason, to work and develop paid off tremendously. I mean All-Conference, Pitcher of the Year for us, and character and classroom-wise; it’s a slam-dunk for CBC. He’s a very intelligent, young man, and has a very bright future ahead of him.”