GRAND FORKS, N.D. — University of North Dakota head baseball coach Jeff Dodson announced the addition of five players to his program on Monday after each prospective student-athlete signed a National Letter of Intent to play for the Fighting Sioux earlier in November.
The five signees for the 2011-12 season, include a trio of Minnesota pitchers, a hurler from Idaho and a dual-position athlete from Florida.
“The biggest thing we needed to do with this class is replace some arms that we will be losing to graduation,” Dodson said. “We have five pitchers that will finish their careers this season, who have pitched more than 200 innings for us.
“We feel like these five guys will be able to step right in and do that effectively. They all have great, power arms and should all see the field pretty early for us. That was our biggest need as we constructed this class.”
The Sunshine State athlete is Jeffrey Campbell, a six-foot-four first baseman/pitcher from Clearwater (Fla.) Central Catcholic High School. Campbell hit .316 with five home runs and 18 RBI as a junior in 2010. He played travel baseball for a team coached by former Major Leaguer Reggie Williams.
The Minnesota conglomerate starts with the tallest player of the signing class – Brett DeGagne. At six-foot-six, the Sauk Rapids, Minn., native posted a 4-0 record with a 1.68 ERA and 39 strikeouts as a junior last season.
The next Minnesotan only trails DeGagne in stature by an inch at six-foot-five. Fellow righthander
Andrew Thome plays at St. Cloud Cathedral High School where he combined to go 10-4 with a 1.94 ERA and 104 strikeouts over the last two prep seasons. Thome also batted .451 with five home runs and 63 RBI combined during his sophomore and junior seasons.
Rounding out the Minnesota trio is another dual-position player in Tyler Ruemmele. A third baseman and pitcher at Eden Prairie High School, Ruemmele helped lead the Eagles the 2010 Class AAA Minnesota State High School championship and a 26-1 overall record. He was named to the all-state tournament team as a junior.
Ryan Wood will join his brother Marcus as a member of the UND baseball team. Wood is a six-foot-two, right-handed pitcher out of Eagle, Idaho. Both Wood and DeGagne were ranked by Perfect Game as a top 1,000 player in the United States. Wood, who batted .345 with two home runs and 28 RBI as a junior, also earned the Perfect Games honorable mention All-America honors as an underclassmen.
– Go Sioux –
