Rangel to polay at Chattanooga State

Published 10:45 pm Friday, May 19, 2006

Baseball has been good to Michael Rangel, and he wants to play the game he loves as long as possible.

Rangel, a senior at Southeast, assured himself of taking another step in his career by signing a scholarship with Chattanooga State on Friday at the high school.

It was also an important move in his career as a student.

“Baseball has just kept me out of a lot of trouble that people get into when they stop playing sports,” Rangel said. “Plus, I’ll be the first one in my family to go onto college, so I just wanted to go on.”

A four-year member of Southeast’s varsity team, Rangel pitched and played solidly at shortstop, first base and third — he made just four errors in the field as an everyday player — while serving as one of the team’s leading hitters in his senior year.

Rangel began making major offensive contributions as a sophomore, a trend that continued throughout his Southeast career. He holds program records for at-bats (86), doubles (11), grand slams (2) and RBIs (39) in a season, as well as hits (4) and RBIs (9) in a game.

Raiders coach Jason Keller said Rangel’s swing is his biggest asset.

“He’s a gap-to-gap hitter with great power and he has great bat speed for a high school player,” Keller said. “You have very good chances of scoring your runs when he’s at the plate.”

Rangel will take those skills to Chattanooga State, where he expects to compete for playing time at third and first with the Tigers, who compete in the Tennessee Junior and Community College Athletic Association.

And playing at the junior college means Rangel will have the opportunity to impress in an effort to finish his career at a four-year school. That’s the goal, though he has not considered specific schools yet.

“I’m just trying to focus on Chattanooga State,” Rangel said, “and make sure I do well there.”

By signing a scholarship, Rangel became the latest Raider to make the jump to college baseball. Fellow senior Heath Lock signed a scholarship with the University of North Carolina-Asheville last month and seven of 13 seniors over the past three seasons have gone on to the next level.

That should be good motivation for younger Raiders — and even players at the middle school level — who want to play college baseball, Keller said.

“It’s exciting to know that you’ve coached guys that have the ability to go on and play at the next level,” Rangel said. “It kind of makes you proud to know that you did what you can as a coach to get them to the next level and it’s a great feeling to know that you’ve got players that want to go to the next level.”

Rangel also recognized that his signing is a plus for his high school program.

“It’s important, just for colleges to realize there are athletes coming out of Southeast and there’ll be more to come,” he said. “A lot of credit goes to coach Keller just for getting our names out there. He’s really good at that.”