Russellville baseball catcher signs with Calhoun Warhawks
Russellville High School senior Shayden Romans has accepted a baseball scholarship offer from Calhoun Community College.
Romans was joined by family, friends, teammates and coaches at a signing celebration held on May 9 at RHS. The catcher has been a member of two AHSAA Class 5A state championship winning teams at Russellville and was outstanding behind the plate and with the bat for the area champs during another playoff run this season.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to play college baseball, and this was like a dream come true to me,” Romans said.
The Warhawks will be getting a catcher that has experience in big games and with working as a batterymate with talented pitchers. Romans is looking forward to carrying that experience to the Calhoun campus in Decatur while playing for head coach Cody Gaskill.
“They have a lot of really good pitchers, and I feel like they’re going to have a lot of success in the future. They said they wanted somebody behind the plate to keep it under control,” he shared.
Romans said that a couple of favorite memories come to mind when thinking about playing at RHS, and they are winning two state championships and the atmosphere during home games.
“He’s been phenomenal for us as a leader and a catcher behind the plate,” Russellville head coach Jess Smith said of Romans. Smith knows what it takes to be a standout catcher as he was one himself during his playing days. “When you talk about catchers, you look at, number one, their leadership qualities. There’s nine people on the baseball field, and eight of them are looking at the catcher at one time.”
Smith said he challenged Romans at the beginning of the year to lead the Golden Tigers into being a tough, fast-paced team, and he did that. Statistically, Romans had 230 chances and committed only three errors. The Russellville starting catcher also shut down the running game of opposing teams by throwing-out more than 75 percent of potential base stealers.
“He’s certainly going to be missed, and that’s going to be a huge hole for us to replace,” Smith explained.
Shayden is the son of David and Shayna Romans.
