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Pitcher Colby Lee eager to compete early for Gamecocks

South Carolina baseball is no stranger to good pitching. It’s won two College World Series on the backs of arms like Matt Price and Michael Roth and has cultivated nine arms currently pitching in professional baseball.

This year’s recruiting class is no different with head coach Chad Holbrook and his coaching staff signing pitchers this year, including one of the best arms in the state.

Former Latta pitcher Colby Lee is ranked the No. 4 righty in the state (No. 10 prospect overall). And he passed up other Division I offers to come to the capital city and play for the Gamecocks.

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“I had offers from a couple of schools in state, a few out of state but I really wanted to be away from home but not too far away,” Lee said. “South Carolina is about an hour and a half away from me so I felt like that was one of the reasons I like that. I like Columbia and the fact that it’s an SEC school. That’ll give me a chance to play big-time baseball in a really good conference.”

When Lee was offered a scholarship by South Carolina the summer before his junior year, he didn’t commit right away.

After a long waiting period—roughly six months—Lee announced his allegiance to the Gamecocks in November.

Since then, it’s been an unwavering loyalty to the garnet and black, mainly because he could wait that long to make his decision. The coaching staff, led by assistant Sammy Esposito, wanted him but wanted him to take his time.

“Some of the other schools that recruited me tries to pressure me to commit kind of fast and (Esposito) gave me my time. He told me, ‘Whenever you’re ready to make a decision, we’re ready for you.’ He said in touch with me throughout the entire recruiting process,” Lee said. “He didn’t rush me to make a decision or anything.”

Lee, who was a dual-sport athlete in high school, was an integral part of a Latta baseball team that won a state title in 2015 and reached the state championship series this year. He also quarterbacked the Latta football team to the semifinals of the Class A playoffs.

His velocity was clocked in 2015 at 89 miles per hour, and this year he was named the Florence Morning News’s Baseball Player of the Year.

Now, he’ll turn his attention to the Gamecocks and Founders Park, where he’s competing for innings with an already stacked pitching corps. He said he hopes to throw well in the fall and become a midweek pitcher, saying “hopefully I’ll fit in and get to pitch some innings pretty early.”

He joins a group returning two of the team’s three weekend starters (Clarke Schmidt and Adam Hill), last year’s weekend starter Wil Crowe who’s rehabbing from Tommy John and five pitchers who threw more than 20 innings last season.

For right now, Lee’s excited to be on the team and compete with players who he said have the same goals as him.

“My high school team is dedicated and whatnot but these guys I’ll be playing with next year will have the same goals as me and we’ll be on the same page,” he said. “I feel like it’ll be a great experience to be able to play with such a high-caliber baseball team.”

Lee, who was not selected in this year’s MLB Draft, enrolled before the final summer class session with other baseball commitments Rian Haire, TJ Shook, Sawyer Bridges, Carlos Cortes and Riley Hogan.

All of them will join a South Carolina team fresh off a SEC East Championship and a trip to the Super Regionals, and Lee especially is ready to get started to see what this team can do.

“They’re starting to win,” he said. “(The 2015) team wasn’t as successful as they wanted to be and this year’s team, the chemistry on the team I can fall right into that and be a part of that. I’m really looking forward to it.”

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