Prep Baseball Report

PBR Wisconsin Player of the Week: LHP Kale Hopke


By Andy Sroka
Illinois and Wisconsin Assistant Director

The WIAA season is in full swing, now in the middle of Week 5 action. At the end of this past weekend and at the start of this week, we’ve been accepting Player of the Week submissions from coaches in the state containing their nominations for the Week 4 POTW honors.

This week may have been our most competitive race for this honor yet – and we’re excited to share the runners-up who came close to the nod in Friday’s Diamond Notes story – but we landed on this power southpaw from D2 Amery: junior Kale Hopke.

Hopke pitched in the Warriors’ wins at the beginning and end of Week 4, against Ellsworth and St. Croix Central. Obviously, he was critically important to both Amery victories, as he combined to pitch 12.2 innings in which he struck out a staggering 33 total batters, while walking only two, allowing just one run on four total hits.

The juniors season totals are similarly off-the-charts impressive, as he’s allowed just three earned runs all spring on 12 hits, eight walks, in 34.2 innings – and that’s to go along with his 83 punch-outs over that stretch. It would simply be an understatement to describe Hopke’s season strikeout totals as dominant, as he’s recording nearly 12 Ks a start, thus far.

In his start on May 17, against Ellsworth, Hopke struck out 19 batters in 6.2 innings, which amounted to breaking a 75-year-old school record. He backed that up with 14 Ks in a conference win later in the week, which propelled him to this award.

We’ve not seen Hopke first-hand since his freshman year, where he was already up to 82 mph. Our staff is eager to see him again soon, either this spring or summer, to see how his development has been coming along, because the results are certainly impressive.

For his efforts, Hopke has been named the PBR Wisconsin Player of the Week, for the week of Monday, May 17 through Sunday, May 23. We're thankful for the POTW submissions we received from the coaches across the state. The players who garnered POTW consideration will earn a place within our Diamond Notes story, so be on the lookout for that by the end of this week.

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