After two years at Rochester Community and Technical College, Ethan Hurn has been rewarded for his hard work.

Hurn was named to this year’s Minnesota College Athletic Conference’s Southern All-Division baseball team, voted on by MCAC coaches.

Hurn said he was happy to receive the honor, but it wasn’t what he had been focused on.

“I was pretty happy about it, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be,” Hurn said. “There’s a few guys from the team (Hern, Jeremiah Van De Steeg and Matt Rhodes) who made it this year, that was good to see. We also found out that one of our guys (Van De Steeg) was named to the all-region team. He’s going to Marshall next year to play at SWMS (Southwest Minnesota State University). It’s kind of cool to get recognized for our hard work we all put in. It’s not anything you really work towards, you just work toward making the World Series, but it’s nice to be rewarded like that.”

This season, Hurn played in 37 of the Yellowjackets’ 40 games, spending most of the season either on the mound, at third base or playing whatever position the team needed him that day.

Hurn tied with Rhodes for the team lead in runs scored with 23, while collecting 27 hits, including his first college home run, and 16 RBIs, while he walked 16 times. Hurn hit .267 on the season and got on base 38 percent of the time.

In seven games, Hurn pitched to a 3.68 ERA and had 41 strikeouts in 36 2/3 innings.

He said the season started rough during the Yellowjackets’ spring trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but Hurn and the team got back on track when they came back to Minnesota.

“We play 12 games down there,” Hurn said. “Last year, we only won one game and this year we only won one game again, but there’s a lot of really good teams down there. I know a few of the teams we played are in line to go to the world series for our division (National Junior College Athletic Association Division III). We got back and things went a lot better, we kind of got back on track and started to win some games, we had a seven-game winning streak at one point.”

Through Hurn’s two seasons at RCTC, the Yellowjackets finished fourth in their region twice. Hurn said this year’s tournament experience was one of his favorite memories of his two college seasons.

“When we went to the region tournament, we got the eight seed, which there were only eight teams so we got the last seed,” Hurn said. “We played the No. 1 seed right away (St. Cloud Tech). They were on like a 26-game win streak and we ended up beating them in the first round of the playoffs.

“They were ranked seventh in the national for D-III juco (junior college), so that was pretty cool to beat them. Our pitcher pitched a really good game, we ended up beating them 5-4.

“It’s a double elimination so St. Cloud ended up working their way back and they played Century in the championship and had to beat them twice. … We had beat Century earlier in the season and they were right up there ranked top 10 also, so it was pretty cool to beat those two teams then see them compete to go to the world series. … We won our first one, lost our second, won our third and lost our fourth so we ended up placing fourth in the region, which is what we did last year. … We won the first game and had a chance in the winners’ bracket. Last year we were in the losers’ side the whole time, so we had to work our way back.”

The Yellowjackets haven’t had the level of success Hurn experienced playing for Martin Luther/Granada-Huntley-East Chain/Truman in high school. He said though there were many great memories from high school baseball, helping the Jaguars to their first state appearance was his favorite.

“Going to state was awesome,” Hurn said. “I wouldn’t trade that for anything, even though we didn’t do as well as we wanted. There are so many great memories, it all gets jumbled up together.”

Although Hurn has had personal success through his two college seasons, he said he isn’t sure if we will continue playing baseball at a four-year college. He said he will wait to decide what he wants to do for a post-baseball career, before deciding if he will keep playing.

While Hurn is considering his future, he will spend the summer playing for the Fairmont Martins with RCTC and high school teammate Zach Wolter.

Wolter joined the Yellowjackets this year, along with Hurn’s former MCW football teammate Parker Anderson. Hurn said getting to play with former teammates made the team more fun.

“Adding Zach Wolter, that was pretty cool because I played with him all the way through high school,” Hurn said. “He ended up playing really well actually, he played second base and shortstop, which is what he did in high school, and he batted leadoff the whole year and did really well there.

“Parker Anderson from Martin County West, I played football with him over there, he was my roommate and I talked him into coming over and playing. … This year, there’s two guys from Martin Luther who committed to Rochester in Paxton (Gravlin) and Mitch (Prafke). Gives everybody a chance to keep playing more baseball. It’s a lot of fun to get to play with guys who you already know and grew up with.”