Ashton Paige is Amherst County baseball team’s all-around threat

By Laura Clark

Published: May 14, 2008

Senior Ashton Paige initially earned his nickname, “Burn,” as a tight end on the football field, but this spring it has translated to the baseball diamond.

“Big hitter, smash hitter, that’s what he is,” senior right fielder D.J. Jones said. “That’s why we call him “Burn,” ‘cause he burns balls up.”

Paige’s batting average has risen to .537 this season, the best in the area. And as the Lancers (5-5) prepare for the Seminole District Tournament, Paige has established himself as their all-around threat. His lead-off hitting is just the start.

Pitching for the first time, Paige is 1-1 with two saves. The all-state outfielder and right-hander came to coach Mike Padgett and asked if he could give it a shot.

“I said, ‘If we’re going to do it, we’re going to be in it 100 percent, where we’re throwing workouts all the time and we’re running after games,” Padgett said. “He’s bought into it. He’s an athlete that will throw in the 80s, and he goes after people.”

Paige is cool and calm at the plate or pitching to it, but he said the patience he shows in hitting doesn’t correlate to the mound.

“It’s totally different,” he said. “You have to focus on your pitching, because every pitch revolves around you.”

He has mixed feelings about the pressure of pitching.

“I just have to come in for like two innings,” he said. “I gotta throw strikes though. That’s the point of time in the game.”

After a slow start this season, as young players gained experience, Amherst has begun to turn things around, winning three of their last five and hanging even in a tough district. Padgett told his players to look at each game as chance to win seven innings. What the Lancers need to work on, he says, is cutting down the strikeouts by making little adjustments and putting pressure on a defense, something Paige does well.

“You can’t exactly pitch around him because he’s leading off the game,” Padgett said. “Once he gets on base, he has a tendency to go ahead and steal bases. We look for him to jumpstart our offense, and late in games to come in and put the flames out if he has to. He’s going to be a leader all the way around, whether it’s on the field or off.”

On a team with six seniors, Paige earns extra distinction by being the only senior to have started on varsity for four years.

“Everybody looks up to him,” Jones said. “It’s a big thing on his shoulders. Anything needs to be done, he’ll tell us. He wasn’t putting us down; he was just telling us what we needed to do.”

With a busy week of make-up games before the district tournament, Paige shrugs off any post-season speculation with an easy grin.

“If we win every inning, there’s no way we can lose,” he said. “We just started winning games, and we don’t want to get too up in our heads.”