Student Athlete of the Week Jed Kilpatrick

The Cougars likely aren't fighting for a state regionals berth without Jed Kilpatrick having arguably the best season of his Niwot High School baseball career.

Through May 12, the senior shortstop owns career-highs in batting average (.472), on-base percentage (.548) and fielding percentage (.932) while leading Niwot to 12 wins, the program's most since 2014. Kilpatrick believes that Niwot's emergence is due in large part to an improved culture built by a still fairly young group of Cougars.

"We have a lot of sophomores on our team this year, in particular, and I feel like our team chemistry is really well-rounded," Kilpatrick said. "We're all really good friends outside of baseball, so we just try to have fun and it works out pretty well for us."

One of Niwot's several sophomores is Kilpatrick's younger brother, Jagger Kilpatrick, who has won five games on the mound to the tune of a 3.03 earned run average. The elder Kilpatrick said that he and Jagger grew up playing the same sports together but rarely on the same team, making this year a special experience for the two.

At the plate, attacking fastballs early in the count has been the key to Jed Kilpatrick's success, and it also hasn't hurt that both Brock Rothstein and Charlie Shaw are enjoying impressive offensive campaigns in their own right ahead of him in the lineup.

"I've been batting third, so usually I have runners on base," Kilpatrick said. "I just try to put the ball from gap to gap, try to move runners over, score them."

Kilpatrick drove in over 10 runs for the second consecutive season and on the basepaths, he has swiped nine bags and found his way home 20 times.

Just prior to his senior season, Kilpatrick committed to continuing his baseball career at Indian Hills Community College in Centerville, Iowa. The program's head coach reached out to him and Kilpatrick made things official following a visit.

"I feel like I needed a little bit more development in my career before I go off to like a four-year school," Kilpatrick said. "I thought junior college was the right move for me to help me get to where I want to be. They had all the right tools that I was looking for, and I really liked it."