SCHERTZ, Texas – Jackson Baack has been playing baseball since he was in the second grade. Now he is a pitcher and one of the captains for the Samuel Clemens High School baseball team.
Baack says baseball has taught him lessons off the pitcher’s mound as well, like how to get through a pandemic in your senior year of high school.
“Right now we are faced with adversity and we just need a win,” Baak said. “It’s a teamwork deal. When we play as a team, we win as a team.”
Next year he’ll be attending Texas A&M Kingsville University where he hopes to walk onto the baseball team. But his main goal is to study wildlife where he hopes to work on a ranch like the King Ranch one day.
“It all started with my dad,” Baak said. “And we’ve always been fishing and hunting and just the passion for it and just seeing the conservation of it.”
Those who have watched Jackson excel in school say it’s his personality that really makes him stand out.
”I think he is one of the most gregarious young men that I think I’ve ever met,” Vicki Williams, Jackson’s counselor said. ”He has a different vision, you know kids these days use the word woke. He’s woke in all dimensions of the word and he just has a different level of maturity of some of his same aged peers.”
Maturity and a positive outlook has helped Jackson overcome his biggest obstacle in school: getting diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade. But he says he doesn’t see it as a learning disability and isn’t ashamed of it. It just taught him how to work harder.
Baak says he hopes other students who face similar issues, embrace their differences.
”Don’t be afraid to be different,” Baak said. “It’s just like glasses, some people need to have glasses to read. I just need a little extra help on reading without them.”