ALBANY – Pursuing a college baseball career, Sam Booth never expected to miss playing basketball so much.
A recent graduate of Niskayuna High School, Booth is currently in his second semester at The College of Saint Rose.
Although the freshman certainly didn’t expect the school to announce its impending closure after just a few months, Booth sees his current situation as an opportunity.
As he searches for a new school to attend next year, Booth isn’t just looking at academics and baseball programs. He wants to play basketball too.
“I’m definitely looking to play baseball and basketball,” he said.
And he already has a few offers from Division III programs to do just that.
“It’s really just about time management,” Booth said on how to handle both sports. “People have done way harder things and really it’s my dream. I’ve missed basketball a ton this year, and it’s definitely going to be tough.”
No matter what level, mostly any college basketball schedule has the potential to bleed into late February and March, the start of most college baseball seasons.
“It’s going to have to be a compromise with the coaches and be on the same page with me,” Booth said. “I don’t think it’s all that crazy of a crossover though, especially if I go to a better Division III school.”
“I think Sam should do both,” said Saint Rose baseball coach Wayne Jones. “I know how much he’s missed basketball and I’ve talked to a few schools about him already. There’s definitely places where he will be able to play both.”
Currently, Booth is far away from both the basketball court and baseball field, as he recovers from knee surgery.
“My senior year, I had a knee injury the whole year and I just didn’t pay as much attention to it as I should have,” Booth said. “I realized I was playing through a partially torn patellar, and it was painful, but I played through it. I just got surgery on it three months ago.”
The 2023 Niskayuna graduate plans to remain at Saint Rose and redshirt for the spring 2024 semester, continuing to work on his rehab and to utilize the extra time to find the best fit, as opposed to transferring to another school right away.
“I just don’t want to deal with all the transfer stuff right now,” he said. “I have a pretty good situation at Saint Rose, and I don’t really want to leave all my friends here yet. I definitely want to finish it out.”
While Booth is now set on playing both basketball and baseball at whatever institution he ends up transferring to, playing both sports was actually something he was hoping to do at Saint Rose — once he returned to full health.
“If Saint Rose had stayed open,” Booth said, “I told Coach Jones that I was going to try to walk on to basketball next year, and he said he’d have been fine with it.”
Should Booth remain true to his intention to redshirt this baseball season, he’d enter his sophomore year with four years of eligibility remaining in both sports.
#Agree Seems like Sam has a lot of potential in both sports! It would be great to see him excel in both baseball and basketball at Saint Rose.
Disagree It might be better for Sam to focus on one sport instead of spreading himself too thin.
Uncaring
509861 901531Some genuinely nice and utilitarian information on this internet site, as properly I believe the style has got excellent capabilities. 820175
885392 744676It was any exhilaration discovering your internet site yesterday. I arrived here nowadays hunting new items. I was not necessarily frustrated. Your tips soon after new approaches on this thing have been useful plus an superb assistance to personally. We appreciate you leaving out time to write out these items and then for revealing your thoughts. 592313