KEENE, N.H. – The Keene State College baseball team's resurgent season has extended to regional honors when both the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA)/Rawlings and D3baseball.com each released their All-Region teams this week.

The Owls had seven representatives overall, including first team representation on both ABCA and D3baseball.com by Little East Conference Player of the Year Tommy Ahlers.  The junior outfielder had a shining third season with the Owls, hitting .426 with an impressive 1.148 OPS while playing and starting in all 42 games.  At one point, he had a 24-game hitting streak and was a serious threat to break the KSC single-season batting average record.  Ahlers also had a team-best 48 RBI, seven home runs (second on the team), and reached base at a .473 clip while stealing 17 bases.  He recorded at least one hit in 35 of his games, including a whopping 12 three-hit efforts and two others with four hits.  He will enter his senior season with 165 career hits after 72 this past season, and if he replicated the exact same total, would finish tied for second in program history in hits with Tyler DiPrato '11 (237).  Former All-American and Keene State Hall of Famer Bobby Doyon is the program's all-time hits leader with 280.

Junior lefty Jake Jachym also added to his own strong campaign that included being named the LEC tournament Most Outstanding Player with All-Region second team honors by both the ABCA and D3baseball.com, pitching to a 3.57 ERA while allowing just 28 earned runs in 70.2 innings across 13 games (10 starts).  He fired a complete game shutout in a mercy rule win over the University of Massachusetts-Boston on April 11 that kicked off the Owls' torrid 17-2 sprint to conference regular season and tournament championships following an 8-13 start of the season's first month and change.  Jachym pitched at least seven innings five times in league play, and was a huge part of KSC's run to an automatic NCAA berth in the LEC tournament, holding Rhode Island College to three runs over eight innings of work in the winners bracket final on an increasingly rainy night at Franklin Pierce University to send his team to the championship round.  He then induced a critical double play to end the seventh and tossed a 1-2-3 eighth in the title-clinching victory over Eastern Connecticut State University.

KSC also had four other athletes – all juniors – represented, with catcher Evan Cali, first baseman Jonathan Chatfield, and pitcher David Floyd all being named Third Team All-Region by the ABCA.  Cali finished with a .338 average and reached at a .436 clip while hitting out of the Owls' leadoff spot.  He added 21 RBI, including driving in what proved to be the deciding run in the LEC championship game with a double in the fourth, while also managing KSC's pitching staff which improved their team ERA to 4.88 from 6.03 last year including posting a 3.02 mark in the final 21 games.  The Owls allowed just six runs in four LEC tournament games, which included a pair of dominant performances from Floyd, who allowed just one hit and whiffed eight in six innings of a 12-1 win over the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in the tournament opener before getting the save in a sharp outing in the title game.  He whiffed 52 in 36 innings overall on the season, including 29 over his final 21.2 innings (six outings) while allowing just two earned runs.  Chatfield remained a force in KSC's lineup, posting a .314 average and .979 OPS to go along with 11 doubles and a team-best nine home runs.  He reached at a .400 clip, and enters next season tied for fourth on the Owls' all-time career home run list.

Senior Shea Zina, who authored one of his biggest efforts on the mound with six strikeouts in four innings against Eastern in the LEC championship, was a third team selection by D3baseball.com in a utility role, as he also hit .280 with seven doubles, three home runs, and 32 RBI often from the fifth spot in the lineup.  He had nine multi-hit efforts including four (three in conference contests) with three hits and drove in at least one run in all four Little East tournament wins while also recording at least one hit in five of KSC's six postseason games overall.  On the mound overall, Zina whiffed 36 in 31 innings across eight appearances (seven starts).

Leading a team that became one of the standout stories in the northeast, fourth year head coach Justin Blood was named the D3baseball.com Region II Coach of the Year (ABCA does not award a regional Coach of the Year) just weeks after being named the LEC Coach of the Year for the first time.  The backbone of KSC's turnaround season was thanks in large part to a 17-player junior class that was recruited by Blood after year one, and despite a rocky start, the Owl leader continues to improve the program year over year, going from 6-28 and just 2-14 in the conference in 2022 to their first LEC tournament appearance since 2017 in 2024, and only one year later hosting a trophy while winning both the league regular season outright for the second time (fourth overall) and their second conference championship, joining the standout 2008 KSC squad.  The Owls' NCAA tournament appearance was their first since 2012, in what turned out to be the last of four appearances in a six year span including a run to a regional final in the old eight-team regional to World Series tournament format.

The ABCA/Rawlings All-Region teams are voted on by members of the American Baseball Coaches Association and the process is led by the ABCA NCAA Division III All-America & Coach of the Year Committee.

The ABCA and D3baseball.com will both release their All-American selections this week.  The ABCA's will be released Thursday, May 29 after the opening ceremony at the Division III College World Series (only All-Region First Team Selections are eligible), and the Gold Gloves and All-Defensive teams will be announced on June 18 and June 19.

The Chair of the ABCA NCAA Div. III All-America & Coach of the Year Committee is Paul Hesse of the University of Mount Union. Also on the committee are Brian Casey (U.S. Coast Guard Academy), Pete Egbert (Misericordia University), Dan Gomez (Western New England University), Ray Hedrick (Randolph-Macon College), Luke Johnson (North Park University), Scott Laverty (Chapman University), Yogi Lutz (Alvernia University), Nick Pontari (Russell Sage College), and Kevin Tomasiewicz (University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh).

The ABCA All-America team was first recognized in 1949 and now includes nine divisions: NCAA Divisions I, II and III, NAIA, NJCAA Divisions I, II and III, Pacific Association Division, and high school. ABCA/Rawlings Gold Glove teams were first recognized in 2007.

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