Jake Barrios - hopefully he's part of the baseball solution

After just one season in Seward County green and white, shortstop Jake Barrios will be moving on to play for one of the top Division 1 programs in the country. Barrios is headed to Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he will proudly wear the purple and gold for the LSU Tigers next season. Barrios was the Jayhawk West [Kansas CC} Freshman of the Year this season after hitting .359 for the Saints while hammering a team high 8 home runs and tying for the team lead in RBI’s with 58. The Weatherford, Oklahoma native was a 1st Team All-Conference and a 1st Team All-Conference pick during the 2011 season and helped the Saints to a 6th place finish at the Juco World Series this week. “It’s always been a dream of mine to be an LSU Tiger” Barrios said. “When Jake decided to come here over a number of different junior colleges and big time division 1 schools, we told him that if he put in the work and produced the way he was capable of, that we would help him get to where he wanted to be” Head Coach Galen McSpadden said. “While it is always tough losing a player of his caliber as a freshman, we are in this for the kids and to see him go somewhere that he has always wanted to be is the best feeling that a coach could have” he continued. Barrios will join the 2009 National Champions in the fall after a relatively disappointing season for the Tigers in which they missed the NCAA Tournament for just the third time in the past 23 seasons while still racking up an impressive 36 wins. Barrios will join an already loaded recruiting class for LSU that will team up with a talented group of young Tigers returning to Baton Rouge for the 2012 campaign.