TYLER TAUNTON PLAYING SUMMER BASEBALL WITH GAMETIME ROCKIES OF THE LOUISIANA COLLEGIATE LEAGUE

        SHREVEPORT, Louisiana – Arkansas Tech infielder Tyler Taunton (Shreveport, La.) is playing baseball this summer with his hometown Gametime Rockies of the Louisiana Collegiate League.

Taunton, who will be a senior this coming year with the Wonder Boys, is listed as a utility infielder with the Rockies, who are the defending Louisiana Collegiate League champions.

The Gametime Rockies are one of five teams that make up the Louisiana Collegiate Summer League and the teams play 24 regular season games over a six-week time frame. The games are played on Friday, Saturday and Sundays at Airline High School in Shreveport. The winner of the league earns an automatic bid to the National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, Kan. The NBC World Series is the premier wood-bat summer tournament in the country.

Last season, the Gametime Rockies posted a 22-2 regular season record and advanced to the NBC World Series, where they finished 17th overall.

This marks the second consecutive season that a Wonder Boy is playing in a wood-bat summer league as Tyler Mattox (Conway, Ark.), a senior on this past season’s Tech team, was a pitcher for the Santa Barbara Foresters last summer. Santa Barbara won the NBC World Series title in 2008.

Taunton completed his first season as a Wonder Boy this past spring after transferring from Bossier Parish Community College. In his first season at Tech, Taunton appeared in 33 games and made 22 starts, with a majority of those starts coming at third base. On the season, Taunton hit .177 with 12 runs scored and seven RBIs. In addition, he was third on the team in stolen bases with seven.

This past weekend, Taunton, the Rockies and the rest of the Louisiana Collegiate League opened its 2009 summer season. The Rockies went 4-0 on the weekend, including posting shutouts in three of its four games.   

-- Tech Athletics --