Augusta Preparatory Day School’s latest baseball star has recently signed to Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn.
Senior Sebastian Neave is an all-state baseball player who will graduate with 20 school records. This season, he set a record with 93 strikeouts in 44.1 innings. In five games, he struck out 11 or more batters, including wins over Westside and Cross Creek and a no-decision against Richmond Academy.
“If I’m privileged enough to be here in the next five years, it is my hope that I will have the honor of nominating Sebastian for Athletic Hall of Fame, because he deserves it,” said Chris Gay, who serves as Augusta Prep’s head varsity baseball coach.
Neave started at Augusta Prep in eighth grade, playing all through his time at the school. Gay notes that Neave’s determination led to an impressive turnaround from his freshman year, during which he “wasn’t that great on the mound.”
But Gay also says that Neave is a devoted player who “lives, eats and breathes” baseball, and has shown himself to be a natural born leader since freshman year whose love for baseball spurred an impressive diligence.
“During the COVID year, when everything’s shut down, he’s hitting balls at his house off a tee,” said Gay. “He would wake up before school and hit two buckets of balls off the tee and just work extremely hard. Sometimes you had this kind of slow him down because he was working too hard.”
Neave himself acknowledges his own enthusiasm for the game — “I love throwing. It could be a football, baseball, anything,” and recalling his T-ball coaches years ago noticing that he “just had more passion than other people.”
Neave was further inspired by seeing college players at showcases.
“Visiting Duke [University] was my biggest motivator,” he said. “The coaches liked what I had to offer, and was just a goal I wanted to reach.”
Neave ultimately selected to sign to the Rhodes Lynx over the Blue Devils, citing the smaller, more intimate campus and the greenspace reminiscent of his upbringing on farms, alongside impressive coaches and the baseball facilities.
“It just felt like a good academic fit for me as well,” said Neave. “It’s a small school… I felt like I could build a connection better than at some giant, 18,000-class public university. A lot of little checkmarks that added up to a big one.”
Neave said he would like to study pre-med, as he is fascinated with anatomy and would like to go into sports medicine.
“If I could be an athletic trainer for a college team, or even a professional team, that would be a dream come true. I want to stay in the sport as long as I can,” he said. “So I want to take whatever is going to get met me down that path.”
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
