Jackson Hipp ‘18 has relished every plate appearance, every fly ball he has chased down in the outfield for the Brown University baseball team this season.
For, you see, Jackson is making up for lost time unlike any other college athlete who has ever come from Christ School.
Saturday’s doubleheader with Cornell will be Senior Day for Jackson and the Bears (11-22), but far from the end of the Greenie’s career. As he has in the past, Jackson plans to play for the Edenton (N.C.) Steamers collegiate team this summer. Then, he will still have NCAA eligibility left as a graduate student with a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science.
“All in all, it’s been a fun season with a good group of guys,” Jackson said.
“The season didn’t go the way we wanted to. We had some close losses that we wish we could get back, but it’s just good to be out there, especially with guys in my class. We spent two years doing nothing, just talking about not really being able to play.”
Indeed, Jackson essentially lost two years of his career at Brown. The pandemic shuttered every sports league in the spring of 2020. Jackson and his teammates were then miffed last year when the Ivy League chose to cancel spring sports while most other leagues played.
Fast forward to this spring, Jackson has started all but two games for the Bears and is batting .200 with 14 RBIs and two home runs. He had a pair of base hits in each of the team’s past two games – last weekend’s 5-4 and 11-9 wins over Princeton.
Jackson hails from Alexandria, Va., and was the Carolinas Athletic Association Player of the Year as a senior at Christ School.
Academically, he was pursuing a degree in Economics at Brown but found that a different path suited him better.
“School-wise, I’ve really enjoyed my classes at Brown,” Jackson said.
“I took one class in Environmental Science, and then I took another and really stared to like it more so than economics and math. I’ve always been good at science, but I had never really thought that's what I’d be able to study.”
Christ School currently has six student-athletes who are either active in the Ivy League or committed to its member schools for the 2022-23 academic year.