Hamburg’s Shuey commits to UNC-Greensboro

In the days and weeks after his performance at the Perfect Game Baseball World Championships in October, Hunter Shuey’s phone rarely stopped ringing.

About 30 coaches from schools in Power Five conferences reached out to Shuey, the Hamburg senior right-hander who struck out seven and walked one in 4 scoreless innings at the tournament in Fort Myers, Fla.

“After I left Florida, I felt like every hour I was getting a phone call from a college,” he said. “I know Coach Nick (Hawks coach Nick Evangelista) was getting calls, too, from different colleges. It’s crazy to think about it.

“I went down there, had a good time and just did my job. I did what I could and it paid off.”

Shuey accepted an offer from North Carolina- Greensboro, choosing the Spartans over Texas Tech, which has been to three of the last four College World Series.

If he attends UNCG and doesn’t choose professional baseball, he will play for coach Billy Godwin, who’s in his second year with the Spartans after a successful nineyear stint at East Carolina. Godwin also coached Evangelista at Louisburg College, a junior college in North Carolina.

“The offer was pretty good, one of the best,” Evangelista said. “A lot made sense. He felt good about it. It kind of clicked. There’s a level of trust there. He sensed it right away.”

Shuey is the 6-5, 210-pound pitcher who suddenly showed up on the radar of college coaches and Major League Baseball scouts after a bird dog for one team saw him throw at a showcase in York County in November 2019.

Until he threw in the mid-90s that day and later that month at another workout, he had a top speed of 87 mph and no command. As a sophomore in 2019, he pitched 11 innings for Hamburg, walking 14 and hitting 10 and allowing three hits and two runs. He still does not have a win in high school or Legion competition after his junior season was canceled because of the pandemic.

He even struggled at times this summer in non-sanctioned games against teams from Berks and Schuylkill counties. Shuey said he was experimenting with his mechanics and delivery.

“I changed my windup three times over the summer,” he said. “I was trying to find what fit me, what was comfortable for me, what worked and what didn’t. We were working towards that tournament in Fort Myers.”

There, he pitched for the San Diego Padres National Scout Team against the best high school players in the country. He dominated hitters in two appearances and was named to the all-tournament team, which ignited even more interest in him.

“He had somewhere between 25 and 30 offers from teams in Power Five conferences,” Evangelista said. “He may have had 10 or 12 before that. There was a lot of information to weed through. His phone and my phone were ringing for a month.”

Shuey was able to visit the North Carolina-Greensboro campus in the fall while on a trip to play in a tournament in High Point, N.C.

“The campus is beautiful and the baseball stadium is beautiful,” Shuey said. “There weren’t a lot of students walking around. I kind of liked that. I liked that it was a smaller school.

“The coaches are great people. Coach Godwin said he was going to make it as cheap as possible for me, which is huge. I might be a key factor in the pitching rotation as a freshman, which is only going to make me better.”