Joey Sullivan
McLean High School

“If you’re not doing well, the pitcher’s mound is one of the loneliest places in the world,” says Joey Sullivan, who recently wrapped up four years on the “hill” as McLean High School’s star pitcher. Rituals are helpful in coping with the pressure. Before every game, he writes a message in the dirt and gives himself a pep talk. “If I had somebody listening to me on the mound while I was pitching, they’d probably think that I was pretty weird,” he says. “I say a lot of stuff to myself.”

All of that weirdness paid off on the day he accepted a baseball scholarship (a full ride) to Virginia Tech. “I hung up the phone and I started crying,” he says. “My mom took a picture.”

Baseball became Sullivan’s first love when he started playing T-ball at age 5. By the time he was 8, though, he had branched out into other sports. He spent the last three years of high school pitching for the varsity baseball team, playing varsity basketball, and swimming competitively with the Division 1 Chesterbrook Tiger Sharks in the Northern Virginia Swimming League.

And he did it all without stinting the “student” half of “student athlete,” finishing school with six AP classes and four honors classes on his transcript, all the while serving as a mentor for freshmen and middle schoolers.

McLean High basketball coach Mike O’Brien says Sullivan was instrumental in his hoops team’s ascent to the 2014 playoffs. “Even though he wasn’t a huge scorer, he did every other little thing. He’s an unselfish player. As long as the team is winning, that’s all he cares about.”

Sullivan plans to study business in college and is tempted to try for a walk-on slot on the Hokies swim team. But baseball is still his passion. Like every other kid who’s ever oiled up his glove and dreamed of the Big League, he can’t help imagining life in the Majors, though he tends to check himself. “It’s unbelievably absurd,” he says, “the small percentage of people that go professional.”

No matter what happens, he’ll always love the game. “I don’t think it gets much better than when it’s 75 degrees out and sunny,” he says, “and you get to be outside playing baseball.”

—Laurie McClellan (photo by Michael Ventura)