INDIANAPOLIS—After a conclusive vote from the league’s Faculty Athletic Representatives, Hillsdale’s Lewis Beals was officially unveiled as the winner of the 2022-23 Great Midwest Athletic Conference Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year award recipient.
 
The Great Midwest Scholar-Athlete of the Year is traditionally presented on an annual basis for an individual deemed to have completed the most outstanding record in athletics, scholarship, and leadership.
 
Beals, and native of Mason, Michigan, is a baseball student-athlete who graduated this spring with a 4.0 GPA in Biochemistry, while ranking in the top-five of his class.
 
He is a three-year member and two-year starter of the Chargers baseball program as an outfielder. This season, Beals appeared in 48 games, recording eight home runs and 40 RBIs for an average of .308. He holds the second-best slugging percentage (.776) and the sixth-most home runs (14) in a single season in Hillsdale history.
 
Beals thrived both on and off the field, earning College Sports Communicators (CSC) second-team All-American honors in 2022 and first-team honors 2023. In 2022, Beals earned the Hillsdale College Department of Biology Junior Scholar Award after completing extensive Alzheimers-related research during the summer. For his contribution, he was part of published work titled “Comparison of Tau and Amyloid beta induced oxygen of optic disc mitochondria in Drosophila melongaster”.
 
Beals represents the third Hillsdale College student-athlete tabbed for conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year award honors after football student-athlete Joey Brenner (2020-21) and softball/swimming & diving athlete Victoria Addis (2019-20).