BELOIT — Beloit College’s Brett Kiger and Matt O’Leary certainly took advantage of a fifth year of eligibility granted by the NCAA due to the impact of COVID.
In addition to both earning All-Midwest Conference First Team recognition, the duo received other postseason honors.
Both were named to the 2024 American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings NCAA Division III All-Region 9 Team. Kiger, a Beloit Memorial High School graduate, earned a spot on the First Team in the designated hitter spot while O’Leary, from Clarendon Hills, Ill., earned Third Team at the shortstop position.
ABCA and Rawlings later announced the 2024 All-American Team selections with Kiger earning Fourth Team as the DH.
Both Buccaneers received “B” Blanket Awards at the college’s athletic awards banquet — the highest honor given to a senior student-athlete.
They both are well-recognized in the Beloit Baseball program record books. Kiger is the school’s home run king with 46 career home runs, both a Beloit College and MWC record. He finished with 193 career runs batted in, second in the MWC and first for the Bucs.
This past season, he finished top three on the team in batting average, runs and triples. He led the Bucs in OPS with 1.232, home runs with a single season record of 18, RBIs with 55, total bases with 116 and had a slugging percentage of .768.
O’Leary now holds the top spot in Beloit history for hits with 224, passing former teammate Garrison Ferone with a home run against Spalding in the first game of the NCAA Tournament this spring. He also holds both the MWC and Beloit records for career bases on balls with 130.
Together, Kiger and O’Leary helped lead the Bucs to back-to-back MWC Tournament championships as well as consecutive NCAA Regional appearances.
The Bucs went 3-0 in the MWC Tournament, defeating second-seeded University of Chicago twice as well as top-seeded host Lawrence. Beloit became the first back-to-back tournament champion since 2010-11 when Ripon College accomplished it.
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