He's a typical North Attleboro student-athlete, a kid who has gotten better and better every year. He's not a superstar athlete, but a hard worker.

It's not impossible that you could have a student athlete going virtually every day, week after week, and that's not a good situation. We try to prevent that.

Troy is different. He is not what people think of as your typical professional athlete.

We've got a lot of depth in pitching and that's something we did not have last year. The way it looks now, Bethany and Andrea will be our go-to pitchers. They have a good command of the strike zone. We're excited about our pitchers. They all worked hard during the summer.

We've never gotten anybody from anything like that. When you get a kid from California, they're not coming to Slippery Rock. They're fishing for scholarships, so we're out of that market.

Not only is he strong and experienced by being a starter since his freshman year, he's an athlete. He's not just a big boy out there. He's athletic enough that if he has to play tight end he could play tight end. He has athletic ability that is not natural for a guy over 300 pounds.