BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Union County High School senior Evan Christmas has put in a lot of work and time to get to this moment — signing a letter of intent to play baseball at the next level.
Christmas, an outfielder/pitcher, took part in a signing ceremony on Jan. 16. He’ll be attending Southeastern Community College in Whiteville, North Carolina.
“It’s super exciting,” Christmas said. “In today’s world of recruiting, it’s truly a blessing and an opportunity that I’m super excited and grateful for.”
Union Head Coach Jiwan James said Christmas’ work ethic is impressive. He noted that the team had 52 workouts scheduled this past fall — workouts that began at 6 a.m. Christmas attended all but two. He missed one because he was attending a camp and another because he was on a college visit.
James said after the fall workouts ended, Christmas would still spend every day in the batting cage after school.
“As long as he keeps working the way that he does, he’ll be successful at the junior-college level, and he will move on to play at a four-year school someplace,” James said. “(Southeastern is) getting a good ball player.”
Christmas said being able to play the sport he loves at the next level is an idea that he embraced as a possible reality his first year of high school.
“It really set in my freshman year of high school when I witnessed other kids sign,” he said. “I realized that this is what I want to do, and if I want it, I can make it happen.”
He credited that work ethic that James talked about.
“I pride myself on that,” Christmas said.
Christmas, a Union County native who previously played for Santa Fe High School, batted .317 over the last two seasons, driving in 25 runs and scoring 28. He had a perfect fielding percentage his junior season.
James described Christmas as a “complete player.”
“He does everything really well on the field,” James said. “He runs well. He throws well. Plays good defense. Good hitter. He’s just consistency across the board. Anytime you can get somebody who can do everything well, you’ve got yourself a good player.
Christmas said he doesn’t have the physical size of a lot of players, so he’s worked hard at excelling despite that.
“It’s truly just from learning the game, studying the game and taking advantage of every opportunity you can,” he said.
Though he strives to excel in all areas, Christmas admitted he takes a lot of pride specifically in his defensive play.
“That’s definitely my game,” he said, adding, “It’s repetition, working every day. It’s really just taking the ground balls, even when you don’t want to do it. It’s just repeating that. Then, it comes to you in the game.”
It sounds like Christmas has a lot of upside for a college program. The one thing he’s focused on is getting bigger and stronger.
“If you want to compete at that level, you have to be physical,” Christmas said.
Before he gets to Southeastern, Christmas will for UCHS for the first time. He’s no stranger to James, though. Christmas was 14 when he began playing on James’ travel-ball team.
“I’m not getting a brand-new player I don’t know anything about,” James said.
The coach won’t be surprised if Christmas does great things as a UCHS Tiger.
“I’m expecting him to actually have a really big season just because of his work ethic,” James said. “He should leave his mark.”
After that, he’ll have the chance to leave his mark on the Southeastern program.
“I think it’s going to be awesome,” Christmas said. “It’s going to be a dream come true, for sure. The dream since I was a kid was to play college baseball.”
