INDIANAPOLIS – Ohio Dominican baseball student-athlete Justin Childers (Pickerington, OH/Pickerington North HS) was officially named the 2017-18 Great Midwest Athletic Conference Male Athlete of the Year on Tuesday.
 
The year-end awards process for select individuals from the conference includes the Male/Female Collegiate Achievement Award (leadership/community service/athletics/academics), Male/Female Athlete of the Year (athletics) and Male/Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year (athletics/academics).
 
Voting is conducted among the league’s administrators from all 13 member institutions in the most current academic year.
 
Like Walsh’s Sarah Berger, Childers was also the recipient of the Great Midwest Collegiate Achievement Award back at the spring awards banquet in Blue Ash, Ohio.
 
Childers earned Great Midwest Player of the Year honors and by the end of the conference playoffs, was the league leader in batting average, runs, triples, slugging percentage and on-base percentage.

He was the D2CCA Midwest Region Player of the Year for the second time in his career and is a candidate for additional national honors as a finalist for the Tino Martinez Award and with several ballots still being voted on.

Through 37 games in 2018, Childers was the national league leader in runs scored per game (1.63), second in on-base percentage, seventh in slugging percentage, eighth in batting average and top 25 in triples.
 
He was drafted by the Detroit Tigers and has started his professional baseball career in the Gulf Coast League, the pro organization’s rookie level affiliate in the minor leagues.