By Katie Zigelman, News Staff

Sophomore catcher Jon Leroux knocked in three runs and belted a home run last weekend in a series against the Towson Tigers. This brought his total to 12 runs batted in on the season, the second-best mark on the team. His performance earned him Huntington News Player of the Week honors.

“I was seeing the ball better than the previous weeks,” Leroux said. “This season has been all right for me, but it’s better as of two weeks ago. I just think day-to-day like every game.”

The Auburn native has been playing baseball since he was five years old, when his dad first got him interested in the sport.

“My dad’s main thing was that he loved baseball,” Leroux said. “I was always watching Red Sox games growing up.”
Leroux, who uses his six foot, one inch, 200-pound frame to block balls behind the plate, said being a bigger kid when he was younger landed him the catcher position.

“The coaches asked, ‘Wanna catch?’ and it worked out for me,” he said.

He continued to play baseball at Auburn High School, where he played on the varsity team all four

years and was captain for his last one. He was named the Central Massachusetts MVP in 2008 and 2009 and helped his team win the Division II State Champions in 2009.

He also played four years of varsity basketball and football, but he always knew that baseball was his s

port.

“I chose baseball because I thought that I had a better chance of going further with my career,” Leroux said. “I focused more on baseball growing up in order to get a scholarship to help pay for school.”

In his first season at Northeastern, Leroux started 27 out of the 32 games that he played. He hit 15 RB

Is and had a .299 average.

So far, Leroux has started 22 out of 24 games his sophomore year and has hit for a .262 average, .002  points above the team average of .260.

Leroux said that his favorite part of playing baseball for Northeastern is his teammates.

“They are all good people,” Leroux said. “Everybody helps out and stays positive. The team’s been struggling this season but we’re hoping to turn that around. Every game has been very close, within one or two runs; we’re a good team. We just need to turn it around and that is what we are all striving for.”

The team stands at 5-19, and 1-8 in conference play.

Leroux would really like to see the team make a run at the Colonial Athletic

Association title. He also mentioned that his favorite place to travel to for an away game this season was Florida, where it was 80 degrees every day.

Leroux is studying criminal justice and would like to do something related to law enforcement after graduation. Some ideas are to work for a government agency or to become a state tro

oper or even a local police officer.