The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/470359
56 ■ THE WOLFPACKER BY BRUCE WINKWORTH t least one thing seems certain for NC State baseball in 2015. This should be the year when Logan Ratledge finally emerges from the shadows and gets some much-deserved attention. The shadows in question are the rather lengthy ones cast by former teammates Car- los Rodon, Trea Turner and Brett Austin, each an All-American and each a first-round draft pick. Ratledge, Rodon, Turner, Austin and several others came to NC State in the fall of 2011 as members of the Wolfpack's most heralded recruiting class ever, ranked No. 4 in the nation by Baseball America. Four years, two NCAA Super Regionals and a College World Series appearance later, there is no question that the recruiting class of 2011 was NC State's best and most ac- complished group ever. In most recruiting classes, Ratledge would be a headliner, maybe the class head- liner. A 2011 high school All-American and a two-time all-state performer, Ratledge was the star at Charlotte's Ardrey Kell High School, one of North Carolina's perennial prep powerhouses. He helped lead Ardrey Kell to a pair of 4-A state championships, and along the way rewrote the school record book so extensively that it should have his name and picture on the cover. The Wolfpack's 2011 recruiting class was not like most recruiting classes, however. Austin was a first-round supplemental pick in the 2011 MLB Draft. Rodon might have been a first-rounder had it not been for a balky back his senior year of high school. Turner, a 20th-round pick in 2011, turned down near-first-round money to come to NC State. Ratledge, despite a brilliant high school career, went undrafted. "Not getting drafted out of high school kind of put me in a different position from those guys," Ratledge said. "Brett, Carlos and Trea got a lot of attention right from the start, and it was deserved. It was definitely different for me, but I just looked at it as an opportunity. I felt that if I could play with guys like that, then this is what I was supposed to be doing and this is where I belonged." Despite being undrafted in 2011, Rat- ledge did not enroll at NC State a complete unknown. Neil Avent, an area scout for the Oakland Athletics and a distant relative of Wolfpack head coach Elliott Avent, coached Out Of The SHADOWS Senior Second Baseman Logan Ratledge Gets His Turn To Shine