Ashton McGee making most of opportunity with UNC baseball

It was the best early Christmas present Ashton McGee could have asked for.

As a senior at C.B. Aycock High School in Pikeville, N.C., he was already anxiously awaiting his chance to play for the North Carolina baseball team. Of course, he figured that moment would come in 2018 after playing his senior season and graduating from high school.

But two weeks into this past December, UNC head coach Mike Fox approached McGee with a question: What would you think about graduating early and enrolling immediately before the start of the 2017 season?

There was no hesitation on McGee’s part.

“I didn’t even think about it twice,” McGee said. “I just knew I wanted to be here. I committed here after my freshman year. I’ve just always known I wanted to play for Carolina. It’s a dream come true, really. I finally get to play and put the uniform on every day.”

After the paperwork and other logistics were taken care off, it became official. McGee would step into the batter’s box at Boshamer Stadium in 2017, not the one at C.B. Aycock, and face opponents like Long Beach State and Virginia instead of J.H. Rose and D.H. Conley.

So far, McGee is making the most of his chance to play college ball sooner than he originally expected.

After going 3-for-5 with two RBIs in the No. 15 Tar Heels’ series-clinching 12-2 win against No. 11 Virginia on Saturday, he is batting .359 with a .468 on-base percentage in the 12 games he’s played. 

“His approach is great,” UNC senior shortstop Logan Warmoth said. “He doesn’t try to do too much. You wouldn’t know he’s a freshman if you watched him.”

That’s high praise for a guy who didn’t know he would be playing for this year’s Tar Heels (12-4, 2-1 ACC) until three months ago.

Sure, there’s been a learning curve for McGee. Adjusting to pitchers’ velocities hasn’t been an issue for him, but getting used to the frequency with which opponents consistently throw their secondary pitches for strikes is something he’s still getting used to.

All things considered, McGee’s handled the sudden transition well. Unlike his fellow first-years, who had the luxury of training during the fall, he’s been forced to learn on the fly.

“Honestly, probably up until the season in the box, I didn’t feel comfortable or felt like I was doing what I was capable of doing,” McGee said. “The first week was like a rush, just being nervous in the box. After that, I got comfortable and changed little things to my swing.”

Since then, McGee has been in a groove and seems to have solidified a place for himself in the lineup for North Carolina. Not even Fox imagined that when he asked McGee to join his team a year early.

“That’s a high school senior in the 3-hole doing some pretty good stuff for us,” Fox said. “It’s kind of crazy.”

@brennan_doherty

sports@dailytarheel.com