Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: Numbers add up for MLB-bound UConn student; leave Madness alone and more

With two older brothers , Sara Clokey often found herself, in her words, “being dragged” to watch their games. “So I spent a lot of time watching baseball at a very young age and I learned to love it,” she said. “My senior year of high school, I took a class called probability and statistics , I had never thought of myself as being good at math, but I loved that class and I saw some clear ways to apply it to baseball.

” This is the right era to be a whiz in math and a connoisseur of baseball. With this skill set Clokey, 21, a senior student manager with UConn’s baseball team, has a position waiting for her upon graduation this month, with MLB’s Cleveland Guardians. “Sara was kind of under the radar, and just became an absolute star,” coach Jim Penders said.

“She sees the game, she understands the game and now she’s going to get a great opportunity in professional baseball and we’re really excited for her. ” After graduating from Tolland High, Clokey worked a summer internship with the Yard Goats, enough to know she wanted to be in baseball, and she got experience with the business side, enough to know she wanted most to be involved on the field. “To go to work and have the place you work be a baseball field, it was just the coolest thing ever,” she said.

When she started at UConn, she began emailing the coaches hoping for a role, and she spent a few semesters entering data in the baseball office. Meanwhile, Hunter Broadbent, who graduated in 2023 an d has worked for the Mets and Cardinals, was taking UConn’s video and analytics to a new level. When Clokey asked if she could play a larger role, the UConn coaches helped her get a summer internship with Bourne in the Cape Cod League.