Lentz named to baseball All-Ivy League First Team

Harvard sophomore catcher Brian Lentz has been selected to the All-Ivy League First Team for baseball. The team is voted on by the league’s eight head coaches.

Lentz, who is 6-foot-1, 210 pounds, and 20 years old, is in his first season of varsity collegiate baseball and was the Crimson’s lone selection to the First Team. He hit .283 (39 for 138) on the year – fourth-best on the team – with four doubles, two triples, one home run, five stolen bases, and 16 RBI. His .363 on-base percentage was tops on the club. Lentz started and played in 39 of Harvard’s 43 games this spring. Behind the plate, he threw out 19 of 55 would-be base-stealers for an impressive success rate of 34.5 percent.

In Ivy League play, Lentz led Harvard with a .373 batting average (25 for 67). While playing 19 of the Crimson’s 20 league games, he had two doubles, two triples, and drove in 11 runs. He proved particularly adept at gunning down would-be base-stealers in Ivy competition, as he nailed exactly half (11 of 22) of league runners on the base paths.

Lentz was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week on April 4, after leading Harvard to a sweep of Cornell by accounting for the game-winning RBI in both halves of a doubleheader on April 1. The next day at Princeton, he went a combined 5 for 9 as the Crimson split a twinbill with the eventual Ivy champions.

Prior to joining the Crimson, Lentz earned 11 letters at St. John’s Preparatory School in Danvers, Mass. He was a three-time All-Catholic Conference selection in both baseball and football, while also starring four years in ice hockey. He was named the 1997 Boston Globe Baseball Player of the Year and was also a two-time All-Scholastic pick in baseball by both The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald.

Harvard (18-25 overall, 10-10 Ivy) saw its run of three consecutive Ivy League championships and NCAA Tournament appearances come to an end this spring.