Rounding the Bases with Dan Grovatt
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Dan Grovatt is having another great season for the Virginia baseball team. After earning Freshman All-America honors last year, he has put an even better season together this year. The Tabernacle, N.J., native is batting .372, which is eighth in the ACC and up nearly 50 points from his freshman season. He is posting better numbers in nearly every offensive category, including hits (73), home runs (six) and runs batted in (45).
He was honored for his strong season on Monday, earning First-Team All-ACC honors. Thursday, Grovatt and the Cavaliers begin the ACC Baseball Championship in Durham, N.C. Today he talks with VirginiaSports.com about the Cavaliers’ strong regular season, as well as the ACC Tournament and more.
Five UVa players on the All-ACC First Team that is pretty impressive.
Grovatt: Everybody played well this year and the team has had a good year. It’s nice to see that a lot of us got recognized for it. Hopefully we will come out and win the tournament now.
It has to be an honor for you to get recognized as well.
Grovatt: I’m honored obviously to be a part of it. There are so many great players in this league and it’s an honor for me to be recognized in that group.
You are playing in your second ACC Tournament this week. How are things different the second time around?
Grovatt: We were right there last year and we are definitely in a better position this year coming into it. We are more of a team we gelled better and obviously we have a better record than we did at this time last year. I think our best baseball will come here in the postseason. It should be an interesting, fun run.
What do you tell the young players about the tournament?
Grovatt: It’s to the point in the season where you can’t get down on yourself over one game or one at bat. You go out there and do what you can to help the team win that day. If it’s not your day, it’s not your day. You can’t really worry about it at this point it’s all about winning games. Just go out there, have fun and do what you can to help the team win.
How will the team bounce back from a disappointing series last week?
Grovatt: I feel like just about everything that could have went wrong actually went wrong. I feel like we played well, but we just had a lot of bad breaks. Hopefully we get those out of the way and our luck will start turning to our side in the tournament.
Now that you are done with finals, you technically are halfway through college. How does that sound to you?
Grovatt: It’s kind of weird because I feel like I just started. I’m technically a junior, I guess. It really has gone fast and it’s been a blast. It’s hard to believe that the next book I open, I will be a junior and I’m going to be taking 300- and 400-level classes and be focusing on a major. I came into school and had no clue what I wanted to do and now it’s starting to narrow down. It’s a weird feeling because you’re still in that school mode and you’re not really looking at life. We have so much baseball stuff and the time really flies when you’re playing baseball.
What have you narrowed it down to?
Grovatt: I am majoring in Economics.
What about beyond that?
Grovatt: Right now I’m just focusing on tomorrow and the tournament, then the regional and so on. Basically I’m just taking it one day at a time.
So basically you have no idea what you want to do?
Grovatt: (laughs) Yes, I have no clue what I want to do with my life.