PHOENIX -- It is a Wednesday practice for the St. Mary’s Knights. Head baseball coach Joseph Ponce winds up a pitch to one of his athletes, a change-up, and gets a strike. “What do you think of that?” says Ponce.

The player says in response, “That was cute,” to the laughs of his fellow Knights.

This is Thaddeus Tanner, a senior at St. Mary's who is playing his best season of baseball, with the highest amount of hits (30), third highest batting average (.361) and most home runs (2) on his team.

This success did not come naturally to Tanner, though. He has worked hard for his entire baseball life to get to where he is.

“I wasn’t always a good player. My freshman year, I didn’t even start for the freshman team that much,” said Tanner. “From my freshman to my sophomore year I just had this huge jump in my baseball abilities, due to mostly my hard work I guess.”

Tanner does not only work hard during practice, he also puts in extra time away from the team to get better. Whenever he has free time, he seems to find himself at the batting cages, working on his swing.

“Thad grinds like no other,” said teammate and friend Andrew Suarez. “I’ve never met another person that puts so much time and effort into one thing as much as he does. During school, he would get there at five o'clock in the morning and be hitting in the cages, I would show up at like 7:30 a.m. and he’s still hitting.”

His teammates look to him for leadership as well. During a game, Tanner is the one who keeps the team’s heads up when things are down and keeps them fired up.

“He’s a leader by example, because he is always doing the right thing,” Ponce said of the senior. “When he makes mistakes, he doesn’t cuss or throw helmets. Failure is going to happen, and he handles it well and he does what he can to help the team.”

Being that Tanner attends a Catholic school, he is also very religious and finds empowerment through it. He is a self-described “cradle Catholic”, born and raised into the religion and he has a few rituals he conducts to help him do better do in games.

“When I have a game I always put it in my prayers to do well. When I go up to bat I make the sign of the cross with my bat in the dirt. When I’m in the field I draw a cross wherever I’m playing. Between every pitch I draw the sign of the cross on my bat,” Tanner said.

This has been Thaddeus Tanner the baseball player; however, Tanner is more than that and something people may not know about him is that he enjoys hunting.

He will hunt just about anything you can put into for hunting raffles. His trophies include elk, deer, antelope and a javelina. 

"My dad’s side of the family is really big into it, so I got into it,” Tanner said. “We have a cabin up north that we go to all the time. I really love the outdoors, it's something I really love to do when its not baseball season and I just love being out there hiking.”

From the things said about Tanner, he is a hard-working individual who has put in the time to improve himself and is now reaping the rewards. As Tanner is graduating this May, he is planning on attending college and hopes to continue to play baseball.

His head coach was confident that he would be able to find somewhere to play.

“He is going to have baseball opportunities in his future after high school,” said Ponce. “We just don’t know where yet. He’s got good grades and he’s in the National Honor Society. He’ll find somewhere to play.”