Alex Henderson Earns SCIAC Athlete of the Year for Stags Baseball, Six Honored on All-SCIAC Teams

CLAREMONT, Calif. - Junior first baseman

Alex Henderson of the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps baseball team earned the SCIAC Athlete of the Year Award and was joined by five teammates on the All-SCIAC teams, the conference office announced today.

Henderson was joined on the All-SCIAC first team by second baseman

Carter Bennett, shortstop

Dillon Martin, outfielder

Bryce Didrickson, and pitcher

Kody Perry, while catcher

Max Pemberton captured a spot on the All-SCIAC second team.

Henderson enters the postseason hitting .400 on the season with 13 home runs and 50 RBI. He hit 11 of his 13 home runs in conference games, while tallying 33 runs batted in, including homers in consecutive games three times (against Pomona-Pitzer, Caltech and Cal Lutheran). A year ago, he had a memorable run through the NCAA Tournament with 11 homers in seven games, hitting nine in the NCAA Regionals, with two three-homer games, and ending with a two-homer game in the Super Regionals at Endicott.

Bennett hit .358 during the regular season with eight homers and a team-high 53 runs batted in, tallying five homers and 35 RBI in league games. His season included a walk-off homer in extra innings against La Verne, and a stretch of home runs in three straight games, two of which came against Redlands, earning a spot on the D3baseball.com Team of the Week.

Martin batted .375 for the Stags in the regular season with seven homers and 47 RBI. He had a two-homer, seven-RBI game in a win over Whitworth, tallying 12 RBI total in that four-game series. Her also was 3-for-4 with five RBI to help CMS take the first game of the Cal Lutheran series, a sweep which gave CMS the outright regular season league title.

Didrickson led CMS with a .414 batting average during the regular season, with seven homers and 34 RBI, which jumped to .441 in conference games, when he had six of his seven homers. He was 4-for-4 with two homers in a game against Redlands, and added homers in the first two games of a three-game sweep of Pomona-Pitzer. He had multi-hit games 23 times on the season.

Perry was the No. 1 pitcher for the Stags this season, ending the season with a 7-1 record on the mound and a 4.37 earned run average. He was 5-1 in league games (with a 4.17 ERA), including a complete-game shutout with 11 strikeouts in a win over Chapman, which earned him the SCIAC Pitcher of the Week Award.

Pemberton hit .409 during the regular season with 10 homers and 41 RBI. He had a six-RBI game in a win over Aurora at the Tucson Invitational Games, earning SCIAC Hitter of the Week honors and a spot on the D3baseball.com Team of the Week. He followed up with two homers and seven RBI in the Redlands series to repeat as SCIAC Hitter of the Week.

CMS finished the regular season with a 29-11 record and an 18-6 mark in SCIAC play, earning the SCIAC regular season title for the first time since 1990. The Stags will open postseason play this afternoon with a 3 p.m. game against La Verne at Azusa Pacific in the second round of the double-elimination SCIAC Tournament.