Perkins Playing Two Sports at Salem State

Sam Perkins graduated in 2009 from , where he played baseball all four years. In his senior year, he helped lead the Hawks to a 10-0 start and a state tournament run before losing to Wachusett. Upon graduating from Milford, Perkins went to Franklin Pierce for one semester before transferring to Salem State.

Perkins, who hasn’t played soccer competitively since the eighth grade, made the Vikings’ soccer team this fall after a late tryout upon arriving to school. Perkins played pretty well and received more playing time than he thought he would. He is looking forward to continuing playing soccer as well as his first love, baseball, in the seasons to come.

In his first season on the diamond, Perkins started in centerfield and finished the season with a .284 average, scored 10 runs and had seven RBIs through 31 games. His sophomore season has just gotten started this month and Perkins is again looking to play centerfield and build off his freshman campaign.

Perkins is studying business management and hopes to own his own business one day. In his down time he can be found enjoying the outdoors, either fishing or hiking.

Favorite food: Chicken, any kind of chicken. I love chicken.

Favorite collegiate or athletic teams: I’m from Massachusetts, so my loyalty is to all the New England teams: Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics and I’m even getting into the Bruins now. I’ve never really been into hockey.

What’s on your iPod right now? Any rap by Big Sean.

If you were to bat against any pitcher you wanted, who would you go against and why?

I want to face one of the better pitchers, as weird as that sounds because I would just love to see how great they are as a pitcher, so I’d probably have to say Ubaldo Jimenez from the Rockies. The guy throws about seven or eight different pitches and throws in the high 90s. I’m not saying I’d get a hit off him, but just being up there against him would just be awesome to see because you don’t see that every day; the guy’s one of the best pitchers in baseball.

What have you been up to since graduating from Milford High School in 2009?

Basically, I’ve been going to school and playing baseball and I actually played soccer this year as well. I went to Franklin Pierce for a semester and I didn’t like it there too much, so Salem State is where I play baseball now.

What made you decide to transfer to Salem State?

Being from Milford—it’s more of a suburban area—and going up there, there’s not much around. If you wanted to get food you couldn’t even walk to a store to buy food, you had to either get a shuttle or find someone who had a car, and for freshmen, not many had a car up there. Being isolated up there was kind of tough for me.

I had visited Salem State my senior year and the coach was really nice and he took me on a tour of the whole town—forget the campus—the whole town. Salem’s a really nice area, a lot history behind it. My brother transferred to Salem State and he liked it there a lot and the baseball team had been good there in previous years, having a couple 30-win seasons, so when I found that out I went over there and toured the campus again. I wanted to transfer either there or St. John’s University in New York and I decided Salem’s the place for me, and honestly, I don’t think I could have made a better choice.

How did baseball go last season and how are things looking for this season?

It went pretty well. We came down to Florida and I actually got pretty sick and I had to stay back from a few games, so that was tough on me. But once we got back from Florida, I ended up getting the starting job in centerfield about 10 games in to the season and I started from there on out. It was a tough season as far as the team went; we had a few bad attitudes on the team and it kind of brought our team down a little bit, but those kids graduated and we’re looking pretty good this season. I’m really looking to forward to this season.

You mentioned that you played soccer this fall; how did the season go?

My roommate’s the captain of the soccer team and I actually hadn’t played soccer since eighth grade, but I still played indoor soccer here and there, and I was playing with him one day and he told me that I was pretty good. I ended up going and talking to the coach one day and he gave me a late tryout and I ended up making the team. I played center back and outside back for the soccer team this year. We won the MASCAC Championship and went to Nationals, where we played Babson in the first round, but ended up losing 4-1; it was a tough game.

Can you talk about your Milford High School experience and if you have any favorite memories from your career there?

Being in Milford, our rival had always been Leominster, and at the same time, Algonquin has always been good at baseball. Going into my junior year we reloaded our whole varsity team and people didn’t think too highly of us. One of our best moments was beating Algonquin High School one out of two times my junior year. My senior year, we still weren’t getting much love from the newspapers—we weren’t even ranked top 5 for our league—and we started our season off 10-0 and on top of that we qualified for the state tournament first and we beat the number one-ranked Algonquin twice. It was a great feeling because people were kind of writing us off, but that didn’t matter to us. What mattered to us was winning. We got pretty close to winning the state championship, but we ended up losing to Wachusett.

What are you looking to do when you graduate?

I’ve always wanted to own my own business. My uncle owns a few businesses and that was always an idea to open up a restaurant of my own. I consider myself a sociable person and in owning a restaurant, you have to be there a lot and talk to the customers, asking them how their time is. Also, I’d like to open my own indoor baseball facility and maybe have a few AAU teams of my own, as well as do some baseball instructing. Even after I’m done playing baseball I’d like to pass on what I know to others.