Ethan Abercrombie had reason to be thrilled when he was selected to play on this year’s Lindenwood University baseball team this spring.

The Montgomery County graduate got a chance to play for an NCAA Division I team for the first time. Lindenwood, a school in St. Charles, moved to Division I after competing in Division II for nine years.

“It felt good,” Abercrombie said. “For a few months, especially in the summer before I got on campus, it was nerve-racking. When I got on campus and kind of looked around, I felt like there was a spot for me here. To earn that spot, it was a sigh of relief. I knew that I did enough and felt like I deserved a chance. I wasn’t the one making those decisions, but I was happy at the end that they gave me that chance.”

Abercrombie wrapped up his third season with the Lions. He played 43 of Lindenwood’s 55 games and finished with 19 hits with two home runs and 14 RBIs.

The Lions finished 13-42 after going 27-24 last year. Abercrombie said playing in the Division I level was much different than Division II. Lindenwood competed in the Ohio Valley Conference and went up against teams such as Mizzou, Saint Louis and Missouri State.

“It was a new level of expectations,” Abercrombie said. “There were a lot of unexpected things. We weren’t sure what we were going to see going into it. We handled some things well. We handled some things not so well. We didn’t win as much as I think we would have wanted to. There were a lot of games that we wanted back. But it was fun.”

Abercrombie, who played third base, got off to a good start, going 3 for 6 in the season-opening series against Nicholls State in February. But by late March, his batting average dropped under .200.

“I kind of got into this mental slump halfway through the year where I was so hard and down on myself,” Abercrombie said. “If you do that in this game, it’s over. It’s all sports. If you can’t believe in yourself, you are not going to succeed. It was about a month there where I had zero confidence. It showed statistically because I was so hard on myself at the plate.”

Abercrombie had his best performance of the season on April 7 against Tennessee Tech, going 2 for 4 with three runs scored, six RBIs and a home run.

“I remember in batting practice right before that game, I made a slight adjustment,” Abercrombie said. “I don’t want to say that it clicked because I still kind of struggled after that game. But I found something that night that gave me confidence. One of our coaches noticed that I made an adjustment. He liked it a lot.”

Abercrombie graduated from MCHS in 2020. The year before, he helped the Wildcats finish fourth in the Class 3 state tournament. His senior year was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abercrombie played 66 games in his three years at Lindenwood. He said playing baseball in college was his dream since middle school.

“I would get done with football season in the fall,” Abercrombie said. “Immediately, I would be in the batting cage for the entire winter until spring comes around. I would be playing high school baseball. The day after high school baseball ended, I was back in the cages for my summer team. I would travel all over the country in the summer trying to find a chance to play for college.”

Abercrombie said he was concerned about earning a spot on the Lindenwood roster when the school switched to Division I.

“In the Division II level, you can have as many guys on the roster that you want,” Abercrombie said. “At Lindenwood, there was a JV team and a varsity team. We had 75 players on the baseball team. By going Division I, you can’t have a JV team if you don’t have a varsity team. So we had to cut down guys.”

Abercrombie was glad that he was not one of those guys who were cut. He was one of 36 players on the team.

“It was more luck of the draw that I picked a school that moved up while I was there,” Abercrombie said. “It’s one of the most rewarding feelings that I have ever been given.”

Abercrombie plans to graduate in the spring of 2024. He said he wants to show some leadership for the Lions in his senior year.

“Being a constant, calm and vocal leader is something I want to take over again,” Abercrombie said. “I let myself get away from that. It’s something that I prided myself on when I played for Montgomery.”