Jake Davenport is probably not a name you hear too often when talking about the Easley High School
baseball team. His name does not exactly jump out in the team’s stats.
But to the credit of Davenport, he’s a huge part of the Green Wave baseball team.
“Jake brings a lot of character and a lot of maturity for his age,” said EHS Coach Gill Payne. “He comes out here every day and pushes guys. He’ll get on them for not working hard. He’ll pick guys up. Guys use him as their hype guy – he’ll start screaming in a game and get all excited. The team kind of gravitates to him.”
Continued Coach Payne, about The Easley Progress Athlete of the Week, “He’s a guy who showed up last year for tryouts. He wasn’t really a baseball player. He was the president of the Chess Club. But the more he was out here and the more you got to know him, and seeing the type of character and his work ethic — he’s just a kid who you have to have around. He brings a lot to this baseball team.”
Davenport, a 6-foot junior pitcher for the Green Wave, has a 4.8 grade point average in school.
“I really enjoy the role I have of just kind of picking guys up when they need someone,” said the 17-year-old Davenport. “I like when I really get them hyped up and they usually score. And normally, they score quite a bit.”
Davenport took some time to talk about what it is like to be a part of a talented pitching staff like Easley’s.
“It’s a great learning process,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot. I’ve only been pitching for two years and I can already say I’ve learned a lot from these guys.”
Davenport, who started playing chess at age 5, is currently the President of the Chess Club at EHS. He looks to study Mechanical Engineering in college and he’s hoping to attend Clemson University. His favorite subject in school is math. He’s currently taking pre-calculus, and is taking some AP classes next year.
“Just kind of developing my math skills,” he said.
Davenport has been to some Clemson Tiger football games and he just loves everything about the local college.
“I’ve been there a couple of times,” Davenport said. “I love their engineering stuff (at Clemson). I love a lot of the things that they do — the sports teams and the way that they teach.”
Jake is the son of Elizabeth and Jason Davenport.
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