Photo of Alex Hill courtesy of UMHB Athletics
BELTON — Alex Hill says he didn’t know what to expect when he toed the rubber for his first start of 2026. The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps lineup—which featured five hitters who hit above .300 in 2025—was undoubtedly the best he had ever faced, stacked with veteran bats whose Game 1 performance in the season-opening series the day before yielded 11 runs.
But Hill took the ball with confidence, holding back the Stags’ offense as best he could over an outing spanning six innings. He threw strikes. Utilized his arsenal of pitches. And by the time he exited the game, the sophomore from Dallas had struck out 10 CMS batters, the first multi-strikeout performance from a UMHB pitcher since March 2024.
“I was in the game cruising, but when I got out of the game, I did not know I had 10 strikeouts,” Hill recently recalled. “I felt like I had pitched pretty well for a team that was that good, but getting out of the game and seeing I had 10, I knew something was brewing inside me mentally.”
His next start against No. 15 Webster? 10 more strikeouts. The following Friday in the series opener at Southwestern? 12. Hill quickly ascended the national strikeout leaderboard, overpowering hitters left and right in a sort of “breakout” stretch after pitching just 14.2 innings a year ago.
But watching from the dugout, UMHB head coach Mike Stawski was not the least bit surprised. Impressed? Certainly. Surprised? Not at all. With a background as a pitching coach and a solid Division II career on the mound himself, Stawski recognized Hill’s talent as a high schooler. To see that potential come to fruition at the college level was only the fulfillment of what they anticipated all along.
“What we’re getting out of Alex [right now] is what we recruited,” Stawski said last week.
And in Hill, the coaching staff recruited a consistent strike-thrower that has handled every start since that 12-strikeout performance in late February with the same amount of poise, assembling a 6-2 record with a 3.09 ERA. In 10 starts, he has 76 strikeouts, the fifth-most in Division III, and opponents are hitting just .194 off him.
It has been quite the upward trajectory for the right-hander, who held his own as a freshman, but never went more than 4.1 innings and averaged a little over one walk per inning last spring.
“Last year, there were a couple things that happened in his developmental progress that just didn’t work out,” Stawski continued. “Some changes were made to his setup, some of the ways he was delivering the baseball, and what we were asking of him. We went back to the drawing board and went back to the system I was hoping he would pitch in this year.
“We didn’t change a lot; we just went back to what he does. Honestly, we just added one or two key things for him, small changes that you guys wouldn’t even know we did. And they clicked really easily for him.”
Hill threw well in the fall, building off the positives from his first year as a Crusader while making the tweaks implemented by the coaching staff. But when he returned to campus after a strong winter offseason, there was another level to his command on the mound.
“Every single time he threw the baseball, it was better,” Stawski said of the early weeks of spring training. “We would look at each other and go, ‘Well that was really good,’ and he would feel the same way. So now you’re gaining confidence with your coaching staff, but you’re also gaining confidence with yourself.”
Hill was not UMHB’s No. 1 starter going into the promising campaign, hence why he started Game 2 against both CMS and Webster in February. But he “was trending in that direction” of taking over the coveted role of Game 1 starter, Stawski said, and once the confidence piece was in place, it was only a matter of time before Hill established himself as The Cru’s ace.
“We kept telling him how good he could be if he would just do it, and he did it, and all the confidence poured out of him,” Stawski said. “And now he is who he is. So it wasn’t a miracle; it was legitimately what we thought would happen. We just needed the breakthrough.”
From an early age, Hill had a knack for pitching. His earliest memories on the mound go back to his little league days, starting from the time he moved up from “coach pitch to kidpitch”. He threw a little harder than most his age, a trait that eventually caused him to play up an age group against older competition as he sought to challenge himself.
“That was always my main position,” he said of pitching. “Obviously in high school, I hit a little bit, just because they needed it. But I knew when I went to college, I wanted to focus on pitching.”
He enjoyed a solid prep career at Dallas’ W.T. White High School, committing to UMHB prior to his senior year. UMHB separated itself in the recruiting process, Hill said, largely because of the coaching staff and the immediate chemistry he found with them while visiting campus.
“Being with the coaches all day [on my visit], and them making me laugh and feel at home really sparked the interest level,” Hill remembered. “Touring UMHB’s campus was beautiful and I loved it. But when I’d go on visits, I tried to look deeper; the coaching staff, the players. UMHB felt perfect. Whenever I first met Stawski, he was amazing, and so were the other coaches and even players—some of whom graduated already—as well. The reputation they brought is still around, and I think that’s a big reason why I committed here.”
It is under several of those same coaches that he has flourished as a pitcher in Belton, asserting himself as a centerpiece in one of the region’s best young pitching staffs. In addition to Hill, fellow sophomore Cole Morkovsky won the ASC’s Pitcher of the Week award after the Howard Payne series sweep. Freshman Zach Hampton is No. 2 on the team in innings pitched behind Hill. Another freshman, 6-foot-7 southpaw Reid Davis, has made eight starts in his first year at the college level.
And those are just a few examples. Hill may only be a sophomore, but he sees himself as an example for the pitchers in the class behind him, the true freshmen who are showing plenty of promise this spring. After working through his first season as a Crusader with highs and lows, he has seen how far trusting the coaching staff and building confidence can take a young pitcher.
“We try to give [those freshman pitchers] confidence,” Hill said. “That’s the most important thing. If a freshman goes out there, I’m ecstatic that they’re out there and I’m excited for them to go throw. I tell them, ‘You guys are going to get your chance soon.’ It happens so unexpectedly. I tell them, ‘Just be ready for it, because last year I was in your spot. I didn’t pitch too much, but when it did come, you have to be ready.’”
One area in which Hill has made especially significant strides is in the first two or three pitches of any given at-bat. He fell behind in counts more often than he would’ve liked last season, and resolved to fix that this spring, getting batters into two-strike counts more often.
“When I’m up there, my main goal is to get ahead of batters,” Hill said. “That’s something I didn’t do last year, and I think it’s something that has really helped me this year. They’re not going to take your first pitch for a home run, but when you go down 2-0 or 2-1, that’s when stuff may go down. But if I can stay ahead, I can throw whatever pitch I want. If I don’t, it limits what pitches Coach Stawski can call for me.”
Stawski’s pitch-calling has rarely been limited with Hill on the mound this season. The sophomore is UMHB’s Thursday night starter in its weekend rotation, a spot that brings with it immense responsibility. With a strong outing in Game 1, Hill’s performance can generate momentum that carries through the weekend’s next three games.
And perhaps no series for The Cru has been more important this season than the one ahead of them in Abilene, which begins at 6 p.m. Thursday. The Cru and Hardin-Simmons enter the four-game slate tied for second place in the ASC standings at 4-4, and the winner of the final regular season series will also secure the No. 2 seed in the ASC Tournament, which begins on April 30.
“It’s an amazing spot that I’ve been blessed to be put in,” Hill said of his role in the starting rotation. “This year, with the teams we’ve been playing, setting the tone [in Game 1] has really helped us out.”
He is passionate about the program and the culture he has become part of the last two seasons. It’s evident in his voice when he talks about it. The victories accrued thus far have been memorable, and Hill certainly believes there are more ahead for this team. But the program is on a stable foundation fortified by more than just what shows up in The Cru’s win-loss tally.
“I look forward to every practice and I look forward to every game,” Hill noted. “Not even just because we’re going to play baseball, but just to be with the guys. We’ve built such a big brotherhood here. I’ve always thought, ‘I want to be with this group forever.’ I’m so glad I get to be part of it. That’s what makes me look forward to playing baseball every day.”
