Middle Tennesee State University Athletics
Catching Up With Blue Raider Catcher Jake Hagenow
4/18/2020 11:47:00 AM | Baseball
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Middle Tennessee catcher Jake Hagenow joined the Blue Raiders from Farragut High School in 2018. While playing for the Admirals, Hagenow posted a .371 career batting average to go along with 44 doubles and 15 home runs.
During his senior season, the Knoxville native hit a whopping .456 with 23 doubles, three triples, and nine home runs. His performance in 2017 earned him District MVP, Regional Player of the Year along with a first-team All American nod.
Hagenow made his Blue Raider debut on Feb. 18, 2018, by going 2-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored against Western Illinois. In his freshman season, Hagenow earned 22 starts, had a .352 on base percentage, collected four multi-hit games, and was named to the C-USA Commissioner' Honor Roll.
Looking to build on a successful freshman campaign, Hagenow's first try at a sophomore season was cut short due to an arm injury in 2019.
Entering the 2020 season as a redshirt sophomore, Hagenow was voted a team captain along with battery mates Aaron Brown, Peyton Wigginton, and Scheldon Paulk. The veteran backstop picked up the first hit of the season for the Blue Raiders with a single at No. 13 North Carolina and had a .985 fielding percentage before his second try at a sophomore season was halted due to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Checkout our interview with the Blue Raider catcher here:
You're one of many players on the Blue Raider Roster who stayed in the tri-star state to continue your baseball career. What is it about MT that made you want to come and be a Blue Raider?
A big reason was to stay close to my family. I might have had the chance to go pretty far away, but that would be a bummer for me, my parents, and my brother. I wanted to stay close and also MT was one of those schools that definitely has potential to get big players and can make a name for itself, so I wanted to be a part of what was being built here.
You were coming off shoulder surgery that sidelined you for most of 2019 forcing you to take a redshirt, and now the season has ended due to COVID-19 so next season will be your third shot at a sophomore year.
Yeah, it's pretty rough. I didn't get to play a full season of summer ball my freshman year so it's been since my freshman year of college since I played a full season. It's definitely unfortunate, but something I did made the baseball gods not ever want me to be an upperclassman in baseball. Maybe in two years I can be an upperclassman and finally break the chain.
This is obviously a unique situation with the year being cut short. What have you been doing to kind of stay in baseball shape with the downtime?
In Murfreesboro we aren't allowed to go to the facility at all, so my roommate's and I have a pretty decent sized backyard so we can throw, we have set up a makeshift gym in our garage, we've been doing a bunch of body weight workouts, and we have 10-pound dumbbells that we have been doing some stuff with. We're trying more to just stay in shape because there isn't a lot we can do to stay in baseball shape, but because we're bored we're working out six to seven times a week just to pass time.
With the way you guys were playing through the first few games, it almost seemed as if the team was finally starting to turn the corner. What was the vibe like in the clubhouse heading into conference play?
We were stoked! You can read about Conference USA all you want, but you really don't know what the conference is like until you've played in it. The games we played against top 25 teams coming in, we played those teams super close and played with them really well each game. We thought we were about to come in and catch Conference USA by surprise. We were so confident that we were going to come in and just roll, which is really unfortunate because we never got to play to find out if that was true or not. We thought that we were well prepared, and we had the element of surprise on our side too.
The pitching staff continued making huge strides this year. What was the biggest difference you noticed in this year's staff compared to previous years you've been here?
I think depth. Honestly, all catchers can agree with this, you might have a pitcher come out of the pen and you say to yourself 'man, I'm really going to have to work hard back here,' and I did not feel that way about a single guy on our staff. I felt comfortable enough with every pitcher on our staff that whoever came in I knew that they were going to throw strikes and get guys out, and they knew it too. They were all confident in themselves because of the work that they had put in with [Associate Head Coach Kyle Bunn] over the offseason. We were deep and that was something that I hadn't really experienced in a long time.
The MT baseball mustache movement was very close to coming back to life. You are an avid participant. What goes into growing and caring for the perfect stache?
Well it's different for everybody. A lot of guys like to start off clean shaven, shave everything, and let the mustache come in slowly. I went for the grizzly beard look for a long time and then the time came where it was like 'alright look guys, it's time for mustaches,' and I just unleashed it all at once. The key to the perfect mustache, in my opinion, is to leave the soul patch. That little accent can make or break a good mustache, and mine was powerful.
