Saints Land Four Baseball Players on All Conference Team

Following a very successful season that saw them capture
the Jayhawk West Championship and finish 3rd at the NJCAA Region VI
Tournament, five Seward County Saints have been named to the Jayhawk
West All-Conference teams. The Saints had four 1st Team selections led
by pitchers Tyler Wiedenfeld and Hayden Howard along with first baseman
Troy Owen and the conference’s Freshman of the Year, outfielder Bryson
Allen. West Point bound Johnny Griffith was a 2nd Team pick for Seward
at third base. The Saints had more 1st Team choices than any other
Jayhawk school, in fact, no other school had more than two (Colby)
players chosen to the top team.

Seward ace Tyler Wiedenfeld was the only of the twelve
1st Team All-Conference members to be chosen unanimously to the team.
Wiedenfeld was a perfect 8-0 in Jayhawk West games this season, posting
a 2.00 ERA in the process. Wiedenfeld is the first Jayhawk Conference
pitcher since the turn of the century to win his start in every
conference series of the year and is the first pitcher in Jayhawk
Conference history to do so that didn’t receive the Most Valuable
Player award, which went to fourth place Colby’s Jake Nath. Wiedenfeld
ended the regular season as the NJCAA’s win leader with an 11-2 record
and finishes his sophomore season with an 11-3 record to go along with
a 2.61 ERA in 97 innings pitched this year.

Fellow rotation member Hayden Howard was also named to
the 1st Team in his freshman season. Howard was electric down the
stretch for Seward, going 5-0 with a 1.10 ERA in his final five starts
of the Jayhawk West season. He finished the year with an 8-3 record and
posted the second lowest ERA in a single season in school history at
1.69. Howard struck out a team high 68 batters and was second on the
team to Wiedenfeld with 74 2/3 innings pitched.

Bryson Allen won the league’s Freshman of the Year award
in a landslide and was picked as a 1st Team All-Conference member after
a stellar first season in green and white. Allen hit .431 in Jayhawk
West Conference games in 2013, 46 points higher than MVP Jake Nath who
was second among West outfielders. Allen also led all Jayhawk West
outfielders in triples, home runs, and runs scored during his rookie
campaign. Allen led the Saints in hitting this season, finishing with a
.391 batting average and was also tops on the squad in six other major
categories including runs (60), hits (90), doubles (15), triples (10),
home runs (5), and stolen bases (10).

Troy Owen was nearly a unanimous choice to the 1st Team
by the league’s coaches at first base for the Saints. Owen put up big
numbers for Seward in the middle of their order this season, hitting
.364 with 9 doubles and 24 RBI’s in conference play. Overall on the
year Owen finished at .330 while tying Allen for the team lead in
doubles with 15 and finishing third on the team with 39 RBI’s.

The head scratcher of the selections came at third base
where despite leading all third basemen in hitting by 73 points during
Jayhawk West Conference play, Saints three bagger Johnny Griffith was
chosen to the 2nd Team rather than the 1st Team. Griffith hit .438 in
conference play and had 8 doubles and 22 RBI’s for the Saints during
their Conference Championship season. Griffith finished the season
hitting .377 overall and was second on the team with an OPS of .986
while cracking 14 doubles and driving in 28 runs on the year.

Despite winning the league with the Jayhawk’s most
inexperienced team this season, Seward Head Coach Galen McSpadden was
bypassed as Coach of the Year in favor of second place Garden City’s
Chris Finnegan.