March 2, 2010
By John Denton
UCFAthletics.com
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ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFAthletics.com) - Beau Taylor, a Central Florida area product who grew up dreaming of playing baseball for UCF, had a storybook first season with the Knights, earning Freshman All-American honors.
Now, the expectations are in place for the Hollywood-esque story to add another notable chapter. To hear UCF coach Terry Rooney and even the sweet-swinging sophomore catcher himself tell it, much bigger things are ahead.
``I've said it all preseason and I mean it: Beau Taylor is the type of player who needs to have an All-American season for us,'' said Rooney, who clearly isn't afraid of heaping too much pressure on Taylor. ``I think Beau's one of the best catchers in the country. He's the guy for us now and we need him to play well.''
If early indications are any sign of what's to come, playing well shouldn't be a problem for the 5-foot-11, 195-pounder from Rockledge. He already has a five-hit game under his belt and two game-winning hits against Siena, and he earned Conference USA's Hitter of the Week after an 8-for-12, two-homer stretch to open the season. So far, he's hitting .485 with three home runs and eight RBI. And defensively, he's thrown out a pair of would-be base stealers.
A .335 hitter a year ago, Taylor worked hard in the offseason to better himself this season. He shared the catching duties with fellow Brevard County native Brandon Romans last season, but the job is all his now that Romans has joined the staff as a volunteer assistant coach. Taylor put on almost 15 pounds of muscle in anticipation of carrying more of the load.
And he embraces the notion that he should be UCF's first All-American player since Matt Fox and Kyle Bono accomplished the feat in 2004.
``I think about it a lot,'' Taylor admitted. ``I have to do better than last year - that's always the goal. I want to get this team to Omaha, but I want to be an All-American, too.''
The Knights (6-1) have five home games this week, facing Duquesne on Tuesday, North Florida on Wednesday and then hosting Central Michigan for a three-game series over the weekend.
Taylor was bypassed out of high school by Major League Baseball scouts, but he's already caught the eye of plenty of influential types in college baseball. He's already locked up a spot in the prestigious Cape Cod League and his balanced, powerful swing looks like something out of an instructional video.
And he's not bad behind the dish either. He threw out 26 base-runners last season, the second-most by any UCF catcher in the past decade. And he gunned down two would-be stealers in the season-opening series against Savannah State.
Taylor said being a complete player is his way of showing leadership for the Knights. And he's intent on being a cornerstone for the team even though he's just a sophomore.
``As a catcher, you really see everything, so you have to be a strong leader for the team,'' he said. ``I'm talking to the coaches more than anybody on the team and I'm working with the pitchers, so it's important for me to do my job every day.''
And if Taylor does his job success should follow for the Knights. There's plenty of speed at the top of the lineup for Taylor to drive in runs, and there's power behind him to protect him at the plate. But it all starts and ends, Rooney said with the star catcher.
``I tell him all the time, `I've coached on a lot of championship teams and one of the hallmark traits of all those programs is that they had great catchers,'' Rooney said. ``We have a great catcher in Beau. He just needs to keep getting better and do his job every day.''
John Denton's Knights Insider appears on UCFathletics.com several times a week. E-mail John at jdenton@athletics.ucf.edu.