Grant senior third baseman Kolton Selders can attest that baseball is a game of failure. He has experienced more than he’d like.
But Selders has picked himself up each and every time and is better for it.
“I’ve always been a pretty competitive guy, so I took those situations as a challenge,” he said. “In certain situations, I’ve already felt what I felt, and I don’t want to feel it again.”
The first time came after Selders was promoted to the varsity team in the middle of his sophomore season. He wasn’t entirely prepared to compete at that level.
“It happened pretty quickly that I realized who I was playing against,” he said. “I was still filling in with my body, and I saw bigger guys, and I was playing against guys who were fully grown. It was intimidating.”
Selders remembers one particular at-bat against Wauconda pitcher Danny Newman.
“He was one of the bigger pitchers I faced, and he threw a knuckleball to strike me out, and I remember thinking, ‘This isn’t going well,’” Selders said.
Despite an inauspicious varsity debut, Selders bounced back to begin last season as the Bulldogs’ third baseman. But after a decent start, he struggled and eventually was replaced in the lineup.
“There was someone behind me as the backup, and I started wondering if he was going to take my spot,” Selders said. “I felt a pressure that wasn’t even there, and I paid for it.
“It taught me a lesson to be selfless and humble. Being on the bench had never happened to me before, and I feel like it definitely changed me.”
Selders looked at the demotion as a way to achieve redemption. He also credits his travel coach, Todd Ankney, the father of Lakes senior first baseman Ean Ankney.
“He is fired up all the time, and that energy is easy to rally off of,” Selders said. “It allowed me to forget about last season and focus on moving forward.”
With the 5-foot-9, 165-pound Selders in a different headspace, he has taken another step forward this season. He was batting .314 with an .883 OPS, two home runs and 11 RBIs in the middle of the order for the Bulldogs (6-13, 4-4) entering a Northern Lake County Conference game against Wauconda on Thursday.
But in true Selders fashion, he had to overcome a slow start at the plate. He points to a game against Rolling Meadows on April 14 as a turning point.
“I was trying to pull everything and was swinging as hard as I could, so I made some adjustments,” he said. “ My dad notices things during the game, and I watch film with my mom. I eliminated my stride to shorten things up and try to make things easier for me.
“It was a quick turnaround, but my first at-bat introducing my wider stance, I hit a home run. I thought to myself, ‘This definitely works.’”
Grant coach Bryan Talbot has witnessed the ups and downs of Selders’ varsity career and has come away impressed.
“We know we’ll get a quality at-bat from him, and he’s played really well in the field,” Talbot said. “Third base is a really hard position to play in high school, with all the positioning and bunting, and every time it’s hit over there, we expect that he’ll catch it.
“And overall, there’s been so much resiliency that he’s shown. He’s a great example for younger guys to see how in a game of failure what can ultimately happen.”
Selders has also demonstrated resilience on the football field, where he was a three-year starter on Grant’s defense. Listed as a defensive back, he ended up near the box just as often. Once he got acclimated, being smaller than most oncoming blockers didn’t faze him.
But Selders vividly recalls one moment in 2023 when he was asked to blitz toward Mundelein’s Brandon Hansen, a 6-foot-6, 330-pound offensive lineman who plays for Illinois. Suffice to say it didn’t go entirely as drawn up.
“That dude just shut me down,” Selders said. “I knew I couldn’t run through him, so I tried to run around him, but that didn’t work.
“It wasn’t a great feeling, but I put it all out there and gave it everything I had.”
That kind of effort will be Selders’ legacy at Grant.
“He probably should have been playing cornerback, but he’s always going to do what’s best for the team,” said Grant senior first baseman Logan Sledzik, an Augustana College-bound defensive end. “He went through a lot last year but always stayed positive, and he’s done really well attacking pitches for us in the middle of the order.
“He cares and has a lot of heart.”
Steve Reaven is a freelance reporter.
