Amateur Career
Mottola attended St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, graduating in 1989. After leading all Broward County high school players in batting average (.573), home runs (14) and runs batted in (RBIs) (48) as a senior, Mottola was named to Florida's Class 3A All-State first team. Out of high school, the Baltimore Orioles selected Mottola in the tenth round of the 1989 Major League Baseball Draft, with the 243rd overall selection. Mottola did not sign with the Orioles, opting to pursue a college baseball career.
Mottola then enrolled at the University of Central Florida (UCF), which he chose to attend over the University of New Orleans, as it was closer to his home. At UCF, he played for the UCF Knights baseball team in NCAA's Division I. As a freshman, he hit .321 in 57 games, but did not hit a home run. He gained 30 pounds (14 kg) for his sophomore season. As a sophomore, Mottola was named the American South Conference's Player of the Week on April 3, 1991, after batting .542 with one home run and eight RBIs in six games. During the season, he batted .343 with nine home runs and 54 RBIs. During the college offseason, he played collegiate summer baseball in the Cape Cod Baseball League.
In his junior season, he batted .345 with 14 home runs, tying the UCF single-season record. Professional scouts considered him a first round prospect, due to his intelligence, size, ability to hit for power, his strong throwing arm, running speed, instincts and polish.
Read more about this topic: Chad Mottola, Career, Playing Career
Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or career:
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
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