Jack Drapkin '14 Recruiting Profile

What motivates me?  Well, I find this to be a multi-layered question.  For some people it may be a simple answer such as their parents or the loss of a loved one.  However, what truly motivates me is proving people wrong and finding ways to be successful in the worst of circumstances.  During my sophomore baseball season, the administration of my school suspended our Varsity Baseball Coach.  We had no Coach at all during the summer before my Junior year and all fall.  I decided that the team still needed to practice, so I organized everyone and conducted regular practices every week.  We also took care of the fields.  I worked out harder than I ever had during that fall and winter to get ready for my Junior year of baseball.  However, everything changed again when, two weeks prior to the start of the season I had an emergency appendectomy.  This was awful news; I had really wanted to get my team into the playoffs and now my own season was in jeopardy.  My news only got worse as I developed a major infection and was forced to remain in the hospital for 10 additional days.  I ended up missing about three weeks of school and had to make up all the work I missed.  I had to learn the hard way what hard work was really all about and so I did.  For the next two months I spent every waking moment on school work and every lunch period with my pre-calculus teacher.  I went to as many practices as I could, but I had to re-build my abdominal wall slowly.  It was a long road back, but with hard work and determination, I was able to come back at the end of the season and jump right into summer ball, where my batting average was over 400.  What I learned through my experience is that you cannot control everything that happens in your life, but you can control what you choose to do about the events that occur.  I am already getting my Varsity Team together to begin practices for Spring 2014!