CHICAGO (June 3, 2022) — In its 37th year of honoring the nation’s best High School athletes, Gatorade today announced Seth Keller of Hanover High School is the 2021-22 Gatorade Virginia Baseball Player of the Year. Keller is the first Gatorade Virginia Baseball Player of the Year to be chosen from Hanover High School.
The award, which recognizes not only outstanding athletic excellence, but also high standards of academic achievement and exemplary character demonstrated on and off the field, distinguishes Keller as Virginia’s best High School Baseball player.
Now a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Baseball Player of the Year award to be announced in June, Keller joins an elite alumni association of state award-winners in 12 sports, including Derek Jeter (1991-92, Kalamazoo High School, Mich.), Jon Lester (2001-02, Bellarmine Preparatory School, Wash.), David Price (2003-04, Blackman High School, Tenn.), Clayton Kershaw (2005-06, Highland Park High School, Texas), Rick Porcello (2006-2007, Seaton Hall Preparatory School, N.J.) and Kris Bryant (2009-10, Bonanza High School, Nev.).
At the time of his selection, the 5-foot-10, 190-pound senior shortstop and right-handed pitcher owned a .583 batting average with eight home runs and 26 RBI through 20 games this spring, leading the Hawks (19-2) to the Class 4 Region B final. He had amassed an OBP of .676 and mashed his way to a 1.192 slugging percentage for an OPS of 1.951 in addition to stealing 12 bases in 13 attempts. Through 20 games, he’d fanned just five times in 71 plate appearances to go with 15 walks, while 55 percent of his hits had gone for extra bases.
On the mound, Keller had compiled a 5-0 record with 61 strikeouts in 30.1 innings (2.01 Ks/IP) en route to a 0.23 ERA, a .429 WHIP, a .071 OBA and a K-to-BB ratio of 10.2-to-1. Ranked as the nation’s No. 132 prospect in the Class of 2022 by Perfect Game and as the No. 2 prospect in Virginia by the Prep Baseball Report, he made the All-Tournament team at the 2021 Jupiter World Championship.
Keller has donated his time as an instructor on behalf of the RBA West Infield biweekly baseball camp as well as at Kime Performance, and he has served as a volunteer referee for the Special Olympics. He has also participated in a community service initiative with the Hanover baseball team whereby team members collected and wrote letters of gratitude to American servicemen and women. Since the 2019 campaign, he’s spent over 100 hours a season prepping and cleaning up the baseball facility both before and after practice, and he’s donated his time to the Ronald McDonald House Charities as well.
“Seth just looks like a ballplayer, from the way he commands the mound and batter’s box to the way he moves around the field,” said Sean Ryan, Head Coach at Benedictine College Preparatory and Virginia Baseball Coaches Association president. “At the plate, there simply aren’t many holes; he’s going to find the barrel and do some damage. On the mound, his command of three pitches to go along with a mid-90s fastball has made him virtually unhittable. It’s very hard to string anything together.”
Keller has maintained a 3.61 weighted GPA in the classroom. He has signed a National Letter of Intent to play baseball on scholarship at Old Dominion University this fall.
The Gatorade Player of the Year program annually recognizes one winner in the District of Columbia and each of the 50 states that sanction High School football, girls volleyball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls soccer, baseball, softball, and boys and girls track & field, and awards one National Player of the Year in each sport. The selection process is administered by the Gatorade Player of the Year Selection Committee, which leverages experts including coaches, scouts, media and others as sources to help evaluate and determine the state winners in each sport.
Keller joins recent Gatorade Virginia Baseball Players of the Year Griffin O’Ferrall (2020-21, St. Christopher’s School), Jay Woolfolk (2019-20, Benedictine College Prepatory), Nate Savino (2018-19, Potomac Falls High School), and Cade Hungate (2017-18, Abingdon High School), among the state’s list of former award winners.
Gatorade has a long-standing history of serving athlete communities and understands how sports instill valuable lifelong skills on and off the field. Through Gatorade’s “Play it Forward” platform, Keller has the opportunity to award a $1,000 grant to a local or national organization of their choosing that helps young athletes realize the benefits of playing sports.
Keller is also eligible to submit a short video explaining why the organization they chose is deserving of one of twelve $10,000 spotlight grants, which will be announced throughout the year. To date, Gatorade Player of the Year winners’ grants have totaled more than $3.5 million across more than 1,300 organizations.
Since the program’s inception in 1985, Gatorade Player of the Year award recipients have won hundreds of professional and college championships, and many have also turned into pillars in their communities, becoming coaches, business owners and educators.
*** To learn more about the Gatorade Player of the Year program, check out past winners or to nominate student-athletes, visit playeroftheyear.gatorade.com or follow us on social media on Facebook at facebook.com/GatoradePOY, Instagram at instagram.com/Gatorade and Twitter at twitter.com/Gatorade. ***
