Charlie Condon walked on at Georgia after being overlooked in high school recruiting, redshirted, and developed into a potential #1 MLB draft pick. He's hitting .456 with 30 home runs and 63 RBIs while staying humble and focused on his team.
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Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about a special story that is unraveling right now about a player that struggled going through this college recruiting process that was overlooked, that wasn't on, like, the top travel ball team. And what is unraveling right now for him is truly amazing, and I'm excited to share that with you. I want you to continue to watch this, and hopefully this inspires you, because if you're watching or listening, you might be a baseball player that's trying to play at the highest level and has a lot of aspirations to play at the college, maybe even professional level going through this, or you're a parent trying to help their son go through this college recruiting process. Hopefully this inspires you. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swinson. I'm a former Division 1 college baseball coach, scout, and recruiter. And now what I do is help high school baseball players and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and put them in the best possible position to play and at the next level. All right, let's rewind here. We're talking about Charlie Cunden. He is a college baseball player right now at the University of Georgia, but we're going to rewind to his high school career. Starting sophomore year, hit.246,247. Not that good, right. And there wasn't much happening for him at this time. And he had to get better, he had to get stronger, all these things. Wasn't again, on his. His top travel team out of Marietta, Georgia was very competitive. At the same time, that Georgia scene, as most of you guys know, going wwba, perfect game, pbr, all of that stuff. But hey, wasn't getting much love there. Wasn't happening. No traction was kind of getting overlooked every stretch of the measure. Then going into junior year, nothing really, you know, got better there than going into his senior year. Still really nothing at all other than a small school, small Division 3 school shout out to Rhodes College. That was on Charlie, and they wanted him to play football and, and baseball, Division 3 school in Memphis, Tennessee. So again, shout out to them, great job recruiting. But then things started to change, but he still had some walls that he had to bust down. And one of a family friend of Coach Strickland at the time, the University of Georgia's coach Strickland, a call and was like, hey, you got to come check out this kid Charlie. He might be an option for you, and you might want to Give him a chance, which is a. That's a big deal. Having people advocate for you and having somebody like that is a big deal because it can open up doors for you. So that Georgia coaching staff comes and watch Charlie and they're like, okay, there's some work that needs to be done, but they can kind of see the potential, the projectability, all that. And by the way, Charlie is. He's a big guy, all right? And in high school, you still. He was tall, but he was lanky. He had to put on some weights, but you saw some actions, all right. I saw some video of him as well. You're like, ah, there's something there. There's for sure something there. Georgia gave him a shot, but he had to walk on. All right? He had to walk on to Georgia, which means nothing is guaranteed. You could definitely get cut as a true walk on. Not a preferred walk on, but a true walk on. He made the team, but he had to. Red shirt, okay. Redshirt means that you do not play at all. You're sitting basically the bench. But the good thing is you don't lose a year of eligibility. So the coaching staff brought him in after that kind of that freshman year. If you were like, we're going to that fall of the freshman year, we're going to redshirt you. So you're going to sit off this year. We need you to put on weight and all that. And now when he got eligibility after his red shirt year, he was a red shirt freshman playing, had a great season. Not like the season he is having right now, but was still a good season. Let's just talk about this. So it was getting no looks, no looks at all in recruiting other than like Rhodes College, maybe one other small school. And then the University of Georgia, an SEC Power 5 school, comes in. We're like, we're going to give you a shot. I mean, just amazing what a blessing that is. And now Charlie gets his shot and he doesn't disappoint. And he kind of got hit in the mouth a little bit. Hey, man, you're not good enough. We're going to red shirt you. Yeah, you got to improve. You got to get bigger. You got to get stronger. And he put his head down and works then. Okay. The coaching staff turned over a new coaching staff. Coach Johnson came over from LSU to Georgia, and that was an opportunity a lot of guys might jump ship, meaning transfer out and go to a new school. Charlie didn't. He wanted to stay there and compete and compete on the field and win for the University of Georgia. So he did and had a great year last year and now he is crushing it. So we went from over overlooked to recruited by a small school. Not much there. Might go there, play football and baseball to a Georgia coming in. Hey, come walk on. Nothing's guaranteed. And walked on, then got red shirted. Okay. Coaching staff change, which is a big deal because it changes the whole culture. Then he goes, he stays, has a great red shirt freshman year. And then currently right now he is potentially going to be the number one pick in the MLB draft. Like, are you kidding me? Is insane. All right. So right now as of this recording, Charlie is hitting 456. 456. All right, that is combined, not SEC and other schools, but hitting. 456 in the conference like the SEC amongst other midweek games is insane, guys. That is like incredible. All right. And on top of that he has 30 home runs and on pace to break records, especially in this age with the bats. He has 16 doubles, 63 RBIs. Just an amazing, amazing story. I'm rooting for him. Hopefully you watch his story, you watch University of Georgia, what he is doing and talk about a humble guy, man, you watch his interviews. Just super, humble, super. All about the team and what is happening and just doing a great job there. So watch him. Let's see where his name gets popped up in the MLB draft coming up. And if you have any questions or if you have any comments, please comment down below and I will see you in the next video. Take care.
