In Pomona-Pitzer history, nine baseball players have been selected in the Major League Baseball Draft.
JC Ng ’25 could be the 10th.
A two-time All-American who started all four years in blue and orange, Ng graduated this spring the program leader in games played (184) and runs scored (233). His 264 career hits rank second all-time, and Sagehens Baseball Coach Frank Pericolosi called his star centerfielder “a slam- dunk [Pomona-Pitzer] Hall of Famer.”
With an outside chance of becoming the first Sagehen since Ryan Long ’21 to be drafted, Ng spent the month of June training at Menlo School—his alma mater—in Atherton, California, while also preparing to move to San Francisco to start a job as an investment banking analyst at Citizens.
The 2025 MLB Draft is scheduled for July 13-14, and as front office executives across baseball decide which college and high school players to draft, Ng will be waiting to see if his exceptional body of work at Pomona earns him a chance to continue his playing career.
“If you ask any player, the goal is to get drafted,” says Ng, an economics major. “It’s every little kid’s dream, but when you start going through high school and college, you may not think it’s too feasible. Even now, sometimes I don’t know how feasible it actually is.”
“I’m just being hopeful.”
Imposter syndrome
Ng’s high school baseball team finished his senior season with a 2-17 record, so while the sweet-swinging lefty was confident Pericolosi recruited him to Pomona for his individual prowess, he occasionally questioned whether he could cut it in Division III.
Pericolosi, on the other hand, had no doubt Ng’s talent would translate to college.
“JC was an excellent baseball player from the moment he stepped on campus,” the longtime coach says. “He had the most advanced hitting approach for any freshman I have ever coached at Pomona-Pitzer.”
Ng started all 44 games in left field his first season, hitting .360 with a team-high 58 runs scored for a Sagehens team that won 32 games after going nearly two years without playing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ng that 2022 season was the lone first-year player to be named first-team All-Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference—something a Sagehen hadn’t done in nearly 10 years.
“A lot of my success can be attributed to my family as well as everyone on the team,” he says. “The coaching staff welcomed me with open arms and pushed me to be the best player I could be.”
Ng played summer ball in New York and Wisconsin before his sophomore year, and ahead of the Sagehens’ 2023 campaign, Collegiate Baseball Newspaper included him on its Preseason Watch List.
As the team’s primary leadoff hitter, Ng was a nuisance at the plate, especially in conference play, where we led the team in most offensive categories. But Pomona-Pitzer missed the postseason entirely, and despite making second-team All-SCIAC, Ng says he fell short of his personal expectations.
“That season was a wake-up call,” he recalls. “I realized I had to figure out what I needed to do to become a better baseball player. I had to change the way I trained to make that jump to the next level.”
An historic season
Ng started all 51 games for a Sagehens team that in 2024 tied the program record for wins in a season (37), captured the program’s first SCIAC Tournament Championship, first NCAA Super Regional Championship and first trip to the College World Series.
As a junior, Ng hit .424 with a single-season program record 72 runs scored. He reached base safely in all 51 games, leading the team and conference with a .546 on-base percentage (OBP). He finished top 10 in the country in hits (84), runs, walks (45) and OBP.
After the season, the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) and D3baseball.com named him an All-American, and he also received multiple Academic All-America honors.
“That season was hands-down the most fun I’ve ever had playing baseball and definitely made my career as a college student-athlete worth it,” Ng says. “That team had the best chemistry I’ve ever seen. We were firing on all cylinders. Every single player on that team delivered at one point or another.”
Toward the end of the season, Pericolosi connected Ng with Pomona alumni employed by MLB organizations to discuss the prospect of him playing baseball after college.
“It was encouraging to hear that could be a real option for me,” Ng says. “That’s what makes Pomona as an institution so valuable, being able to meet alums who are in your corner, as well as able to help advance your post-graduate career, whether that be in athletics or academics.”
“I don’t know if there are too many other schools in general, let alone in Division III, that have alumni who can advocate for you.”
Banking or baseball?
This past spring, the Sagehens reached the NCAA Regionals for the third time in four years.
Ng had a career-best 31 extra-base hits as a senior, including 15 home runs, and drove in a team-high 63 runs. ABCA/Rawlings named him Division III All-America First Team—one of two California players to make the 18-person squad.
“He’s one of the best leaders I’ve ever coached here,” says Pericolosi, who's won 547 games over 21 seasons at Pomona-Pitzer. “He had a professional approach to everything he did in our baseball program and led by example every day.”
After the season, Ng stepped away from baseball briefly to rest and prepare for his job at Citizens.
Ng learned economics came intuitively to him during his first year at Pomona. He thrived in classes such as Behavioral Economics, Industrial Organizations, and Corporate Finance because they had relevance to the world he planned to enter after college.
Ahead of his senior year, Ng interned at Citizens for 10 weeks and secured a return offer to be retained full time after he graduated. Before starting at Citizens last month, Ng did daily hitting and throwing drills at Menlo School to stay sharp. He added sprint work and lifting, a recipe for success concocted by Pomona Assistant Baseball Coach Jason Staub.
As a prospect from a Division III program, Ng knows he’s waiting for two, maybe three, teams out of 30 to decide whether to call his name during the MLB Draft. “Just having the opportunity to be in these conversations has made the entire baseball gig worth it,” he says.
These past few weeks, Ng’s been living in a world between banking and baseball, knowing one will soon give way to the other.
Given the choice, “You can always get back into the workforce,” he says. “There aren’t too many opportunities to get back into baseball.”