Gardner wins Male Gamer of the Week honors
Teays Physical Therapy Center, Inc. and The Putnam Herald are pleased to present this week’s male Gamer of the Week to Joel Gardner of the Hurricane High School Baseball Team.
Senior Joel Gardner has helped lead Hurricane to an impressive 31-1 record and a match up with the 4th seeded St. Albans in the semi-finals of the state tournament on Thursday June 24th at 4:30pm. He contributes the team’s success to, “Staying in the moment, and trying to get 1% better every day. We practice hard and try to transfer that to the game.”
Gardner is 6-0 on the mound this season with a 0.93 earned run average and an impressive 43 strikeouts in 30 innings pitched. In addition to his contributions on the mound, he has been great at the plate batting 4.21 with 30 runs batted in and 4 home runs.
Hurricane High School Baseball Coach, Brian Sutphin, on Gardner “First of all he’s a good teammate, and has been his entire career. Definitely has a team first attitude. He has some god given ability and a good work ethic, so you know good things are going to happen for him.”
Gardner started playing baseball at an early age, and contributes a lot of his success to his parents. He said, “They always taught me to work hard and do everything at 100 percent and don’t take it for granted.” When asked what he likes about the sport of baseball, he spoke to the simplicity of the sport and sports in general, saying “just trying to hit a little white ball with a round bat, it’s fun.”
Gardner will be headed to West Virginia University this Fall to study business and play baseball for the Mountaineers.
Please look for a local high school athlete to be named male Gamer of the Year next week. Sponsored by Teays Physical Therapy Center, Inc., and The Putnam Herald.