Shelbyville pitcher announces commitment to University of Kentucky

Patience has kept Aiden Smith on track to reaching some lofty goals.

As a freshman at Shelbyville High School, Smith was garnering interest from top-notch collegiate baseball programs. Enough so, he could have given a verbal commitment. Before that happened, though, the NCAA changed the recruiting window, essentially sidelining any recruiting until Aug. 1 of his junior year.

“As a freshman for a lot of people, right as that rule change was coming in, anybody that was pretty much talking to anybody, since not many people knew how it would work, a lot of people committed,” said Smith, now a junior at Shelbyville and one of the top prep pitching prospects in Indiana. “It takes your name off the board and no school will look at you since you are committed. Over this summer, and a lot of people on Aug. 1, it was all over social media that they decommitted and they were opening their recruiting process again.

“I am really glad I was able to take a step back and wait. There was a long talk because I really thought Alabama is where I wanted to go. I had been there a couple of times and it’s a good school. They have pretty good baseball and are on an uprise as well. I am really glad I was able to step back and take a couple of years to mature and relax and really find what mattered to me.”

Alabama was the first school to recruit Smith. A representative of the program even came to a Shelbyville game in 2023 to watch him pitch. It would have been easy to make that commitment.

Sixteen months later, Smith is now committed  -- to the University of Kentucky. He announced his decision on Sept. 29.

“After my Kentucky visit, I knew that was where I wanted to go,” said Smith. “Everything there was exactly what I wanted. It felt like home. It’s close to home. They treated my parents equally well. I got to talk to every single player there.”

The University of Kentucky baseball program moved into its new home, the $49 million Kentucky Proud Park, in 2019.

Smith was in California for the Area Code Baseball Underclass Games when Aug. 1 arrived. A strong performance against some of the nation’s top players only solidified his stature.

“Aug. 1 hit and I was out in California and got a bunch of text messages and started lining up phone calls,” explained Smith. “We did about four or five calls for the next four or five days. The phone was blowing up. I was making connections. After that week, I was starting to narrow it down. A couple weeks later, I was lining up visits.”

The University of Kentucky and University of Mississippi were the first two on the docket.

“I was almost hesitant going to Ole Miss. The thing that kept me wanting to go there was to compare the two,” said Smith. “Ole Miss was really cool. It was a cool place, it just wasn’t for me. In the end, Kentucky was.”

Smith had two more visits scheduled but canceled knowing Kentucky was the choice.

“It is definitely a huge relief. It got pretty hectic for awhile and it was pretty overwhelming just constantly getting home from school and getting done from tennis and trying to line up calls after I had a long day,” he said. “Most of the calls lasted 20-30 minutes so that takes a lot of time out of your day.

“Now that it is over, it’s a huge relief because I can focus on getting better and being myself and not as much on playing for scouts anymore.”

Smith admits taking the extra time to make an informed decision was a wise move.

“I can speak for myself and a lot of people, as a freshman you don’t really understand everything,” he said. “You just here a Division I school and that’s where I want to go. It’s pretty easy to get caught up in all of that.”

In the end, the visit to Lexington was key.

“When I was down there at UK, I was talking to their pitching coach who has been there about 15 years. We talked about what they do in the offseason, and what they do for fall ball,” said Smith. “The first thing I did when I got there was watch two hours of bullpen (work). That meant a lot to me. I was able to really see what they do on a day-to-day basis, and I got to see their coach really working with their players and I got to see what he was like on the practice field.

“We talked about what they did in the offseason. It was a lot similar to what I do in the offseason. So that meant a lot to me because it means I don’t have to change a whole lot from what I like to do.”

What Smith (photo, right) likes to do is compete – both on a tennis court and baseball diamond. As a sophomore in 2023, he teamed with senior Karson Schaf and won 24 matches for the Golden Bears and became the first Shelbyville doubles team to reach the state finals. Now teamed with sophomore Wyatt Armstrong (photo, left), the duo is 19-2 as they enter the Center Grove Sectional today for an opening- round match.

In two baseball seasons at Shelbyville, Smith is 8-6 with a 2.13 earned run average and 149 strikeouts over 95 innings.

With Smith and highly-touted senior pitcher Gavyn Fisher returning for the Golden Bears, the baseball program is set for a follow-up season to its 16-9 run in 2023 and sectional championship game appearance.

“I couldn’t be more excited for this season,” said Smith. “I am really focused on tennis right now and I want to win here, but I can’t get that thought out of my head about how good we should be this year.”

Shelbyville’s last sectional championship season was 2005.

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