By Kanisha Fowler
The baseball pitcher who has been a starter since the middle of his freshman year, looks forward to graduating and starting a career with professional baseball.
For as long as he can remember, it has been Matt Fraudin’s goal to be a professional. Even when he played other sports in high school, he knew he was going to quit that and focus on baseball in college.
His goal to play professional ball was almost accomplished last year when an Area Scout contacted him and told him they were interested. Fraudin was in contact with different teams, the Area Scouts observed him, but he was not chosen by a Head Scout.
“Just trying to work hard and continue my chance of getting drafted,” Fraudin said. His hard work was shown when he earned All-Big South Conference honors and led the league in strikeouts for the second season in a row.
Fraudin is a native of South Hills, Penn., ten miles south of Pittsburg. He is studying business administration and if things with baseball don’t go as he plans, he would like to go into investment banking.
Fraudin said his most memorable moment was when he was named national player of the week and he threw a game shutout against the number two hitting team in the nation, William and Mary. He doesn’t have one thing he would change about his baseball career at Gardner-Webb.
“I think I was pretty lucky to come here,” Fraudin said. “I had a lot of other friends who went to other schools and I’m the only kid who has gotten a lot of success and actually played all four years.”
Fraudin said some of his friends went to other schools and had to transfer because they weren’t getting much playing time.
Fraudin has one sibling, his brother Ben and he is a chiropractor. Fraudin’s biggest fans are probably his parents.
“It’s an eight and a half hour drive to get down here on the weekends and my family comes every single weekend,” said Fraudin “I’ve pitched over 300 innings in my career here and I think they’ve missed a total of 6 innings.”