His numbers jump out at you like a line drive.
Mount Carmel third baseman/pitcher Tyler Laurisch has played an outstanding junior season on the mound and at the plate. He's struck out 42 in 48 1/3 innings as a pitcher and is hitting .400 with 27 RBIs. In 127 at-bats, he's struck out eight times.
In the classroom, the Dyer resident's academic numbers are pretty good too.
He is ranked No. 1 in his junior class and has a 5.07 GPA on a 4.0 scale. He's also taking advanced placement classes and he will take five A.P. classes in each semester next year. Laurisch said the combination of all of those numbers has Harvard recruiting him heavily for academics and baseball.
"I have always put academics first, my parents have always pushed school," Laurisch said. "I work hard in the classroom, but I also love playing baseball."
The Caravan (29-7) will face Clemente at 4:30 p.m. Thursday in one semifinal of the Class 4A Mount Carmel Sectional. They'll need Laurisch and his 10 doubles and 30 runs.
Caravan coach Brian Hurry said Laurisch is an example of what the program is about.
"Tyler is a focused and very determined young man in the classroom and on the ball field," Hurry said. "He sets goals and then gets after them. It's his work ethic that separates him from others. He has a lot of fun pursuing excellence."
As a freshman, he was one of 900 students in the world to earn a perfect score on a National Latin Exam with over 140,000 students taking the exam. He has studied the language all three years at Mount Carmel.
"It is just fun to study a different language," Laurisch said. "I know not a lot of people study it, but I want to. You never know when I will need it.
"When I was in Rome, the popes, they had what they did written in Latin and it was kind of neat to be able to understand it."
He plans to study physics or chemical engineering, whether he picks Harvard or not. Laurisch, who is part Greek, also speaks language, taught to him by his maternal grandmother, Sophia Panagakis.
"She and one of her good friends taught me and other Greek kids the language," Laurisch said. "When I go to church, it is neat to talk with my grandma's friends in Greek. They like that a lot and when we go to Greece, I can actually talk and not have to ask my mom everything."
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