In its 31st year of honoring the nation’s best high school athletes, The Gatorade Company, in collaboration with USA TODAY High School Sports, announced Anthony Videtto of Silver Lake Regional High School as its 2015-16 Gatorade Massachusetts Baseball Player of the Year.
Videtto is the first Gatorade Massachusetts Baseball Player of the Year to be chosen from Silver Lake Regional 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 Videtto as Massachusetts’s best high school baseball player, and now is a finalist for the prestigious Gatorade National Baseball Player of the Year,
Videtto joins an elite alumni association of past state award-winners in 12 sports, including Derek Jeter (1991-92, Kalamazoo HS, Mich.), Roy Halladay (1994-95, Arvada West HS, Colo.), David Price (2003-04, Blackman HS, Tenn.), Chipper Jones (1989-90, Bolles School, Fla.), Derek Lee (1992-93, El Camino HS, Calif.) and Jon Lester (2001-02).
The 6-foot-2, 195-pound senior infielder, outfielder and right-handed pitcher had led Silver Lake Regional High to a 14-2 record at the time of his selection. Videtto produced a .458 average with four home runs and 14 RBI with the bat through 16 games.
The 2016 Patriot League MVP, he also posted a 2-1 record with a 1.35 ERA and 43 strikeouts in 26.
Videtto has maintained a 4.21 weighted GPA in the classroom. A member of the National Honor Society, he has volunteered locally on behalf of the Yawkey Family Inn and as a youth baseball coach.
”We have played against Silver Lake Regional High for the past two years and Anthony Videtto is the best player we have faced,” said Leo Duggan, Oliver Ames High head coach. “He played the infield against us and was awesome, taking away a couple of hits. At the plate, he had four hits and we had a hard time figuring out how to pitch to him.”
Videtto has signed a National Letter of Intent to play baseball on scholarship at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
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 high school sports leadership team in partnership with USA TODAY High School Sports, which work with top sport-specific experts and a media advisory board of accomplished, veteran prep sports journalists to determine the state winners in each sport.
Videtto joins recent Gatorade Massachusetts Baseball Players of the Year Joe Walsh (2014-15, Plymouth North High School), Joe Freiday (2013-14, Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School), Ben Bowden (2012-13, Lynn English High School), Rhett Wiseman (2011-12, Buckingham Browne & Nichols School), John Gorman (2010ñ11, Catholic Memorial School), Kevin Ziomek (2009-10, Amherst Regional High School), Kyle McKenzie (2008ñ09, Thayer Academy), Scott Weismann (2007-08, Acton-Boxborough High School), and Jack McGeary (2006-07, Roxbury Latin).
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