Official D3Baseball.com Release
BRADFORD, Pa. – For his performance during the 2018 season, junior catcher Austin Parent of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford baseball team has been named D3baseball.com First Team All-Mideast Region, officials announced Monday.
"This is another great accomplishment for A.P.," Head Coach Zach Foster said. "With the work he put in and the season he had, it is great that people are taking notice at the national level. The amount of time he puts into bettering himself as a player and a young man is beginning to come to fruition."
As the baseball branch of the D3sports.com network, D3baseball.com provides consistent coverage of baseball at the NCAA Division III level all season long, as well as during the pre and postseason, while awarding weekly and yearly accolades.
Adding to his historic season, Parent is the first member of the Pitt-Bradford baseball program to receive postseason recognition from D3baseball.com since the website's inception in 2007.
His First Team All-Region status comes five days after he was announced as the fourth Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference Player of the Year in Pitt-Bradford baseball history.
A native of Gilbert, Ariz., Parent put together not only one of the best seasons in the country but in Pitt-Bradford program history. Since the end of the season, he has moved into the top spot nationally with a .496 overall batting average, which is the best in Pitt-Bradford program history and four points shy of the best in AMCC history.
Parent's .496 batting average is higher than any hitter in each of the three NCAA Divisions.
On top of being the nation's stand-alone top hitter, he also led the country with a .614 on-base percentage and posted the second-best slugging percentage in the nation at .916.
His nine home runs are the most in Pitt-Bradford program history, and his 48 RBIs and 109 total bases ranked second in the AMCC.
The catcher posted a .963 fielding percentage and threw out nine would-be base stealers.
His consistency at the plate showed as he finished out the season riding an 18-game hitting streak.
This is the second time Parent has picked up recognition from D3baseball.com this season, as he was named to its weekly honor roll, "Team of the Week", on April 15.
Also represented on the First Team All-Mideast Region team from the AMCC are pitchers Tre Thomas and Shane Emrich from La Roche.
800 players were nominated throughout the eight Division III baseball regions. For each region, there is a regional player of the year (a batter), a pitcher of the year, a rookie of the year (must be a freshman) and a coach of the year.
Up next, D3baseball.com will use its 2018 All-Region teams to select the All-America teams, which are set to be announced on Wednesday.
