Virginia Tech's Ben Watson rises from Division III to become ACC batting champ (2024)

BLACKSBURG — Ben Watson spent the past four seasons in the nonscholarship world of NCAA Division III baseball.

Now he’s playing Division I ball. And the transition has gone rather well.

The Virginia Tech center fielder finished the regular season as the ACC batting champion with a robust average of .418.

“I was feeling confident coming into the season. [But] I don’t know if I would’ve guessed I would’ve been hitting [almost] .420,” said Watson, whose team will play in the ACC tournament Tuesday “A little bit pleasantly surprised in that.”

Watson joined Tech as a graduate transfer from Division III member Elizabethtown in his home state of Pennsylvania.

He has navigated the jump from Division III to Division I so well that he made the All-ACC second team Monday. He leads the ACC in hits (89) and is tied for third in the league in doubles (19).

“My story’s obviously different than a lot of other guys,” he said. ‘Being able to look back over the past five years and see where I started, … I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t proud of myself,” he said.

He has exceeded Tech coach John Szefc’s expectations.

“There’s quite a difference between hitting at the Division III level and hitting in the ACC,” Szefc said. “But if you watch how Watson’s developed, he’s seemed to make that transition just fine.

“I think he’s one of the best hitters in the country.”

‘Late bloomer’

Watson is from suburban Philadelphia. He grew up rooting for the Philadelphia Phillies.

“I’d watch them pretty much every day in the summer,” he said. “Seeing them … winning [the 2008] World Series, … I think that played a big part in me falling in love with the game.”

Not that he didn’t try playing other sports.

“I messed around with basketball and flag football a little bit, but I was pretty undersized for both of those growing up,” he said.

The 5-foot-11, 185-pound Watson did not attract any interest from Division I or Division II baseball programs as an outfielder and pitcher in high school.

“I think a lot of that was because of my size. I was 145 pounds my senior year, which might have turned off a lot of bigger schools,” he said.

In the fall of his senior year of high school, Watson picked Elizabethtown over a few other Division III schools.

“He was a really good athlete [in high school]. He was just small. He was a late bloomer,” Elizabethtown coach Adam Sheibley said. “He had a better senior year [in high school] from a pitching perspective than he did a hitting perspective. But the weight room kind of changed it all for him.”

After hitting .291 as an Elizabethtown sophom*ore, Watson batted .429 as a junior in 2022.

“He has elite bat-to-ball skills,” Sheibley said. “His hand-eye coordination is elite.

“He wants to spray the ball to all fields.”

Watson spent the summer of 2022 playing for Morehead City (North Carolina) in the Coastal Plain League, a summer circuit for college players. Justin Verlander and Ryan Zimmerman are among the big names who once played in that league.

Watson, a left-handed hitter, batted a league-record .427 that summer. Many of the pitchers he faced were from the Division I ranks. He was named the league’s hitter of the year.

It made him think he could have a Division I future.

Having been a Division III spring-sports athlete in 2020 and 2021, Watson was granted two extra years of eligibility by Division III because of the coronavirus pandemic. Elizabethtown has a graduate school, but Watson wanted to use his extra eligibility elsewhere.

“I thought it was time to move on, maybe challenge myself a little bit more, see how … far up the ladder I could go,” he said. “I wanted to go Power Five. I thought that I … put together a good enough resume to give myself a chance at a bigger school.”

So in the fall of 2022, he entered the transfer portal. He notified schools he would be remaining at Elizabethtown for his senior season but would then be available as a graduate transfer.

He reached out to 10 schools in Power Five conferences that fall but heard back from just three or four. He received “real interest” from only two of those schools.

One of them was Virginia Tech, which offered him a scholarship — a meaningful offer to someone whose parents had been paying for Elizabethtown tuition. He verbally committed to the Hokies that fall.

“I’ll give the guys on our staff, Kurt Elbin and Tyler Hanson, a lot of credit with that,” Szefc said. “They’re able to find some gems there that maybe aren’t coming out of the sexiest places in the world but they’re still pretty good.

“There’s been some really good players that have come out of Division III baseball as of late in the Northeast.

“As this transfer portal thing evolves, you’re starting to see more and more good players that are coming out of those kind of schools and they have two or three or sometimes four years of college baseball under their belts and they’re just far more advanced.”

The following spring, Watson hit an eye-popping .483 as an Elizabethtown senior. He finished among the Division III leaders in batting average and was named a 2023 Division III first-team All-American.

And yes, that average came against Division III pitching. But hey, Billy Wagner used to pitch for Division III member Ferrum — and he wound up shining in the major leagues.

“D-III ball does not get the credit it deserves,” Watson said.

He graduated from Elizabethtown with a bachelor’s degree in industrial and systems engineering.

Memorable season

Watson headed into fall practice at Virginia Tech feeling a need to prove himself.

“I came from D-III, which a lot of guys don’t really know a whole lot about,” he said. “A lot of people think it’s a huge step down and a completely different game.”

Watson, who is currently on a 13-game hitting streak, said he has become a better hitter while at Tech.

“The coaches here help us prepare so well for this type of pitching. They kind of make the game slow down a lot when you’re in the box,” he said. “The scouting reports we have going into the game — we develop a plan that really makes it a lot easier.”

Watson started in center field when Tech opened the season at Charlotte.

“That was really special,” he said. “I was like, ‘All right, I’m here. I made it to one of my biggest goals.’”

He had four hits and seven RBIs in the home opener against Rhode Island, which was the team’s fifth game of the season.

“That’s when I really proved to myself that I could be a [D-I] guy,” he said.

Watson ranks seventh in Division I in batting average and eighth in hits. He needs three more hits to tie the Tech single-season record of 92 hits.

“It’d be difficult to predict if you went back a year ago that a guy that just played Division III baseball would be leading the ACC in hitting,” Szefc said. “But if you look at his track record, all the guy’s ever done is hit.

“He has elite-level hand-eye coordination; the best hitters have it.”

Watson has four homers and 44 RBIs and has scored 52 runs for the 10th-seeded Hokies (32-20, 14-16), who will face Duke in ACC tournament pool play Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C.

“He understands he’s not going to light a park up by hitting 10 homers,” Szefc said. “He understands his strength is probably as a doubles and singles guy. … But he can affect an offense in a monstrous way with the skills he has.”

Watson is pursuing a master’s degree in building construction. Because he joined the Hokies with two extra years of eligibility, he plans to get his master’s degree next spring.

Of course, there is no guarantee Watson will be back with the Hokies next season.

Perhaps he has made enough of a splash in Division I to get chosen in the major league draft in July.

“I definitely think that’s a possibility,” Watson said.