Name: Jack Purdy, 12
School: Home Schooled, Avondale Estates
Accomplishments: This outstanding athlete swims and plays tennis, but he found his first love, baseball, at the age of tender age of 18 months.
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His mom, Jenn Purdy remembered the moment.
“We were at a birthday party for a friend and there was a plastic bat and ball. It was like a light turned on when he picked up the bat and gave it a swing.”
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Soon, the tyke was fielding pitches and hitting balls nearly every day during backyard practice with his dad, Nick. By the time Jack was old enough to play T-ball at five, he was a skilled hitter.
Today, the twelve-year-old short stop’s batting average is .583.
In July, Jack and his Druid Hills Thunder All Star team mates will play in the Cooperstown Dreams Park Tournament in New York with young ball players from all over the country. The event is a national invitational open to athletes 12-years old and under.
“He’s an excellent student and always gets his work done,” said Jenn, who home schools Jack. At the age of eight he began writing “friend bout” as part of his English curriculum, a blog on sports topics such as Babe Ruth, the Super Bowl and the NCAA March Madness Bracket.
Recently, Jack along with his team mates competed in the Odyssey of the Mind Competition where teams choose and then work to solve unusual problems during the school year.
The team chose Extreme Mouse Mobiles as their project, with the challenge to build mousetrap-powered vehicles that could run a multi-point course and then be incorporated into a skit.
The group steadily advanced through the ranks placing 2nd in regional, 2nd in the state and 7th in the world competition at the University of Maryland where they competed among thousands of teams from the U.S and 25 other countries.
Jack also competes on two swim teams. During school months he swam for DeKalb Aquatics and in the summer he swims and is the lead junior coach for the Avondale Tidal Waves. His best stroke is butterfly and his preliminary time in the DeKalb County meet for the individual 50-yard butterfly was 30.32 seconds.
The sports enthusiast also plays tennis and according to his mom, is good enough to beat her on a regular basis and garner praise from coaches and skilled players.
