LACEY, Wash. – Being a freshman in college is tough, being a freshman student-athlete is even more difficult. Imagine on top of all that, you're also not just starting nearly every game, but leading off every game and manning the difficult to defend middle infield…oh yeah…AND being one of the best players in the conference while doing it.
 
Brady Bean is no ordinary freshman.
 
As the leadoff batter for Saint Martin's baseball team, Bean has burst onto the scene, getting on-base in over half of his plate appearances, while using senior level smarts to run that bases and score big runs. He has shown he can do it all and is doing it at a level where everybody surrounding him in the leaderboards don't have an "FR" next to their name like he does.
 
Lead the conference in on-base percentage, triples, and stolen bases, Bean also falls in the top five in walks (32-second), batting average (.379-third), and runs scored (36-fourth). The second baseman from Kennewick has also constantly been coming through in the clutch for SMU, with the highest batting average of anybody in the GNAC when there are two outs (.444). Going into last weekend's series against NNU, it seems like Bean had showed it all, well, almost.
 
It was the first pitch of game two on Friday that Bean saw pepper over the heart of the plate before thwacking it over the left field fence for his first homer of the season. One game later, boom. Another home run. This one in the second inning. Really, the only thing left for Bean to check off on his statistics list was hitting a dinger, and he did that twice against the Nighthawks for good measure.
 
With the Saints playing their final contests of the season this Thursday and Friday against Western Oregon, Bean's freshman year will come to a close by the time the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean Friday night. While the Saints may not have won as many games as they would have hoped, around Bean and fellow freshmen standouts Nikki Scott, Kyle Schabot, Carson Jones, and Blaze Wong, the foundation has been set and established for a strong future from this entire class.
 
Please be sure to check in to SMUSaints.com for all the latest scores and updates from the final week of the regular season, as well as anything to report when the GNAC unveils the All-Conference selections and special award winners from the 2023 season.