By Hayley Herring
This past year, Carroll Senior High graduated many remarkable, talented students with bright futures ahead of them. All-star Dragon baseball athlete, Tyler Alexander, is one of them: A gifted left-handed pitcher, Tyler led the 2012–13 Dragons to a successful season and signed to play at TCU beginning this fall.
Tyler enjoyed a myriad of awards and recognitions this past season. He was named District 4–5A Pitcher of the Year and Co-Most Valuable Player, and he was selected to play in the Texas High School Coaches Association All-Star game in Round Rock. Tyler began his time as a varsity player as a freshman after Carroll coach Larry Hughes first noticed him at a Dragon baseball camp.
“The more I saw him, the more I saw what a really talented player he was,” Hughes says. “We really felt like Tyler could handle the varsity competition. The team felt like when he went out there, we were going to win. We put him in a lot of high-pressure situations, and he worked hard at everything he did. We never had to worry about him cutting corners.”
Tyler took on an important role pitching for the Dragons all four years and was the ace of the staff his final two seasons. In his final year, he dominated opposing hitters, finishing with a 12–1 record and 0.60 ERA in 93 innings of work. Tyler also led the Dallas-Fort Worth area with 177 strikeouts and just 23 walks.
The Dragon star helped lead the team to a 34–6 record and postseason appearance. Tyler, who pitched in the playoffs all four years, finished this season having traveled far in the postseason before the team lost to Arlington Martin for the second consecutive year in their class 5A Region I final. The five suspenseful rounds of playoffs tested their team and Tyler's ability to handle difficult situations. His mother, Maryann, says her son had never felt pressure like he did during high-school playoffs.
“He has learned to keep his cool and be smart under pressure,” she says. As a junior, Tyler's athletic career was put in jeopardy when he broke his wrist during the first round of the playoffs. As the Dragons advanced deeper in the playoffs, his hand healed enough for him to make one relief appearance in the region final. Tyler recently expressed gratitude to Carroll for the lessons he learned from his teammates and the baseball program that helped him along the way.
“Since my freshman year, I've always been around athletes who are hard-working, which has driven me to work even harder myself and is a big part of the reason I am the man and pitcher I am today,” he says.
In June, Tyler added another memorable experience to his baseball career: He was selected in the 23rdround by the Detroit Tigers in the 2013 First-Year Player Draft, but he instead opted to attend college. Tyler joined TCU’s Horned Frogs baseball program, which has a history of producing top pitching prospects under coach Jim Schlossnagle.
HayleyHerring is a Carroll ISD Board and Community Relations summer intern. She graduated from Fort Worth Christian School in 2010 and is currently a senior at Baylor University. Hayley is studying public relations with minors in film and digital media and English and plans to graduate in May 2014.