Plant City High Baseball Player Receives Wade Boggs Award

PLANT CITY, FL -- A Plant City High School student-athlete received the coveted Wade Boggs Athletic Achievement Award at the Hillsborough County Commission meeting Wednesday, May 16.

The Wade Boggs Athletic Achievement Award honors a high school baseball player or team in Hillsborough County who displays outstanding athletic, scholastic, and community achievements.
Parker Messick, a pitcher and first baseman from Plant City High School, is this year's winner.
Only a junior, Messick hit .298 this season, and led his team with four home runs. On the mound, he was 6-3, with a 1.58 ERA and 45 strikeouts.
Messick was named to the 2018 Hillsborough County All-Western Conference Baseball Team, Federal Division, twice. He was awarded a medal as first-team pitcher, and also selected to the second team as a first baseman.
Messick, who has a 5.42 cumulative grade point average and has performed well over 100 community service hours, has accepted a scholarship to Florida State University. He plans to study biological sciences, go into pre-med and play baseball.

Franco Aleman, a pitcher from Alonso High School, and Evan Watts, a catcher from Robinson High School, received Wade Boggs Athletic Achievement Award honorable mentions.
Aleman, a senior who was awarded a baseball scholarship by Florida International University, finished the 2018 season with a 9-1 record, with a microscopic earned run average of 0.58, and over 100 strikeouts in 72 innings.
Watts, a senior, hit .246 this season, with a fielding percentage of .955. Watts has a weighted grade point average of 6.79 in the challenging International Baccalaureate Program, and plans to attend the University of Florida to pursue his goal of becoming an orthopedic physician.

The county commission established the award in 2005 in honor of first-ballot National Baseball Hall of Fame member Wade Boggs. A resident of the Tampa Bay area since he was a boy, Boggs is a 12-time All Star who ended his 18-year Major League Baseball career as a member of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, which retired his number 12 in 2000. His career statistics include 3,010 hits, 1,513 runs, 578 doubles, 61 triples, 118 home runs, 1,014 runs batted in, and a batting average of .328. He reached base safely in 80 percent of his 2,432 career games. The Boston Red Sox honored Boggs on May 26, 2016, when they retired his number 26 in a ceremony at Fenway Park in Boston.
For more information, visit the Wade Boggs Athletic Achievement Award page.

Image via Parker Messick