Roch Cholowsky has had a little extra time to wrap his head around being a Perfect Game All-American.
As Perfect Game does each year, a local selection is chosen ahead of the rest of the roster to help introduce the All-American Classic to the city it will be played in. With the Classic heading to Chase Field in Phoenix this year, Cholowsky, a Chandler, Arizona native, was the first player selected back at the beginning of May.
Playing the event so close to home is going to be a special experience for Cholowsky, who will be taking a short break from football practice to participate. When he’s not sending base hits back up the middle, Cholowsky is throwing touchdown passes over the middle.
“I’m super excited,” he said. “I’m going to have all my friends there from school and all that, because it’s only 20 minutes from where I go to school. So a bunch of friends are going to come out and support me and a bunch of my family, too. I’m super happy about that.”
The Classic actually became something tangible to Cholowsky more than a year ago, when his Hamilton High School teammate
Gavin Turley was named a Perfect Game All-American.
In speaking with Turley after he came back from the Classic in San Diego last summer, Cholowsky knew he needed to get there himself. The dynamic duo at Hamilton then went out and won a 6A state championship together and wound up as the No. 4 overall team in Perfect Game’s final High School Top 50.
Right after, Turley was off to Oregon State and Cholowsky was being introduced as the first PG All-American in a press conference at Chase Field.
“[Turley] told me it was the best event that he’s gone through his whole life playing baseball,” Cholowsky said of the Classic. “So I made it my goal. Right when he got back from [the Classic], before I started my junior year, we set goals…I set mine to make the game and have a good senior year. He helped me do that. He worked with me, and he’d run me through all these things so that I could go and test well at PG National. He was a big partner.”
Cholowsky made his old teammate proud at PG National. The No. 26 overall prospect in the class is tooled-up like Turley, submitting a 6.68 60-yard dash, was 86 mph across the infield, put together a professional round of BP, and hit in game action as well.
The Hamilton shortstop has this in his blood. His dad, Dan, played professionally and now scouts the game professionally. When he has his dad hat on, he’s proud of the player Roch has become. With his scout hat on, he has to be excited about the potential Roch shows as a slick-fielding shortstop and potent bat.
It’s a different experience, Roch said, growing up with a dad who played the game at such a high level and now works so hard to find talent. But it’s been great, he said. It’s turned him into the prospect he has become.
It’s turned him into a Perfect Game All-American.
“He’s definitely hard on me,” he said. “But it’s obviously all love. He knows what’s best for me. He’s always looking out for my best interest…He’s been through it. So it’s been good. He’s been helping me my whole life, guiding me into who I am.”