Geoff Green, U-32’s new baseball coach, remembers a moment from last season that stood out. In a game against Randolph last Spring, U-32’s star pitcher Owen Kellington struck out 6 players in a row over two-innings on 18 pitches.
Green, who played college baseball himself, said he’d “never seen that before.”
In the fall of 2021, Owen will be continuing his academic and athletic career at the University of Connecticut. He committed to their baseball team earlier this year.
Geoff Green said that “what stands out most about Owen’s pitching style isn’t his velocity or his pitcher repertoire but rather his control.”
“Owen is very good at getting ahead of batters, getting ahead in counts which puts hitters on their back foot and really leaves a pitcher at an advantage,” Green said. “So the more often you can do that the greater your ability to control the game.”
“He doesn’t just throw fast with a wide variety of pitches,” Green said. “He can throw those hard and fast and a wide variety of pitches for strikes.”
Some of Owen’s earliest memories are of baseball: he’s played since he was three. “My dad and I used to hit around for hours at the rec field,” he said, “we would spend entire days there in the summer.”
In elementary school he played all the sports his school offered, he “just enjoyed baseball the most.” By 6th grade, he quit other sports to play more outside of school.
“I started devoting more time to it and playing more,” he said, “each time with harder competition.” In seventh grade, Owen joined the Concord Cannons, a travel team out of Concord, NH, which he still plays for. His first year on the team they traveled to Georgia for a national tournament.“I had never played on a travel team before,” he said “Getting to meet and know all these kids who enjoyed the same things I did was a great time.” Owen has also played for U-32’s Varsity Boys Baseball team since his freshman year. Junior Connor Derosia described him as “very dedicated to baseball in and out of school.”
Baseball as a sport is more popular in the South so gaining recognition was difficult at first. It’s not unpopular for high schoolers who are passionate about sports to leave public school and switch to private education for a better chance at getting recruited for college teams. “All the big tournaments are down South or at least out of state,” Owen said.“My family and I have thought about transferring me to Rice, but playing for the Cannons has helped me get the recognition I needed so we didn’t see a point.”
His coach, Geoff Green has a similar view, “Owen thinks about the game at a really advanced level,” Geoff said, “He is very analytical and you can tell he really understands baseball and it really speaks to him.”
