UNIVERSITY CENTER, Mich. – Saginaw Valley State University baseball senior Hayden Jatczak collected another award for the 2024 season. After three First Team All-America honors and three Midwest Tegion Player of the Year awards, the Bay City native earned Player of the Year from Division II Baseball Insider.

Jatczak adds the DII Baseball Insider Player of the Year after being named Midwest Region Player of the Year by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA), the Division II Conference Commissioners Association (D2CCA), and the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA). He was also named First Team All-America by all three organizations. He was also named the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) Player of the Year becoming the first Cardinal to earn that title since 1993. He was also the first Cardinal baseball player to be named First Team All-America.

The two-way player put up a record shattering season with SVSU. He set the season record for batting average, hits, doubles, home runs, runs scored, and runs batted in. After the season concluded in the Midwest Super Regional for the Cardinals, Jatczak ranked in the top five in all of NCAA DII in several categories including batting average, hits, hits per game, doubles, runs, runs per game and total bases. Jatczak set new single-season records for SVSU in batting average hitting .468, hits with 108, RBI with 82, runs scored with 90, doubles with 27, and home runs with 16. He also threw the first confirmed no-hitter for SVSU since 1992 with a 5-0 win against Findlay on February 18.

SVSU baseball hosted a postseason tournament for the first time in program history as they hosted the Midwest Regional #1 and the Midwest Super Regional. The Cardinals had never made it to the Super Regional before and ended their season with two one-run losses to the University of Indianapolis. Saginaw Valley baseball set a program record in wins with 41, GLIAC wins with 23, innings pitched with 487.0, pitching strikeouts with 433, runs scored with 516, RBI with 464, hits with 691, doubles with 142, triples with 25 and walks with 308.