FREEPORT — He may have been just an ordinary baseball player a few years ago, but former Rochelle Hub Alec Beach is beginning to carve his own path as a freshman at Highland Community College.

An outfielder and pitcher for the Cougars, Beach has played in all 16 of Highland’s games this season, hitting .191 with nine singles, two RBIs and two stolen bases thus far. While those numbers may not jump off the table, the former First-Team All-Conference player and Most Improved Player Award winner is taking things in stride as the baseball season heads into April.

“It’s going well,” Beach said. “We’ve played a lot of tough opponents, that’s for sure… The freedom you have, being able to ask my coach if I can stay after practice and work on different things, we have nice facilities with cages and everything so we just have a lot more time to get swings in and other types of work.”

After a self-proclaimed “average” season as a junior at Rochelle Township High School, Beach took his game to another level in his final year, hitting over .400 in conference play. He never thought he’d have a chance to play baseball in college, but Beach has worked his way into a starting spot with the Highland Cougars, and he figures to be an important piece of the team moving forward.

“Coach [Jarrod] Reynolds is, by far, the best coach I’ve ever had,” Beach said. “He taught me how to mold the swing I have now and he taught me a lot of things about the outfield. I still say to this day that he’s the reason I was able to play college ball. The gap between my junior and senior years was very big, and the reason for that is because he was there before and after practice to help me out.”

Beach and his Cougar teammates have traveled quite a bit since the start of the season. Riding on a 14-person bus on trips that have lasted as long as 16 hours has been one of a few differences Beach has observed between high school baseball and college baseball.

“The velocity of which college players can throw the ball and the plays they make in the field are faster and better than what I saw in high school,” he said. “During high school, especially my senior year, I was relaxed because I knew I was talented enough to get hits. But now it’s a lot different and I need to do everything I can to get a hit.”

The Hubs recently kicked off the baseball season with a draw to the Harlem Huskies before falling in games to Rockford Boylan and Belvidere. With a handful of juniors and even a couple sophomores playing up at the varsity level, Beach said the most important thing for Rochelle’s young core is to never give up and to continue to battle when things look tough.

“My coach right now tells me to take it one pitch at a time,” he said. “It’s all about attitude and effort. You can’t change what the umpire or what the other players do. Focus on what you can do for your team each game.”