Pirates draft Quakers' baseball and football recruit

Eight-round pick Jonathan Searles must decide whether to sign with Pittsburgh or pitch and play quarterback for Penn. Maybe Jonathan Searles will play football for Penn this year. Maybe the Huntington, N.Y., native will play baseball for the Quakers next spring. Or maybe the incoming freshman will play minor league baseball in the Pittsburgh Pirates' organization. Searles, a top football and baseball recruit, will have some tough decisions to make about his athletic and academic future after being selected by the Pirates in the Major League Baseball First Year Player Draft last week. Pittsburgh selected the right-handed pitcher in the eighth round of the 50-round draft held by conference call in New York City. He was the 242nd player chosen. Searles said he is still weighing his options and does not expect to decide whether to accept a Pirates contract offer for at least a few weeks. "One decision I have made is that I will enter Penn in the fall and start school in the fall," Searles said. "The rest of it, I don't really know. I'm weighing the factors of when I can go to school -- as far as if it's one semester a year, if I can get a whole year in and then play ball with the Pirates in their training facilities." Searles met with Pirate scout Dana Brown on Sunday morning to discuss where the pitcher would be originally assigned and how quickly he was expected to move up in the Pirates' minor league system should he decide to sign. But the Huntington High School senior is still not certain whether he would play both football and baseball if he does not sign with Pittsburgh. "If I can do both, I'll probably try to do both," Searles said. "It'll be hard with all the time it takes up, but right now it's another one of the options we're weighing out that we're going to have to come up with in the next couple weeks." Searles, a quarterback at Huntington, was originally only recruited by Penn football coach Al Bagnoli. Quakers' baseball coach Bob Seddon did not actively pursue the 6'3'', 200 pound quarterback until last spring. "I was naturally very aware of him," Seddon said. "At that point I was alerted about him and went and saw him pitch and stayed in touch with him." Seddon encouraged Searles to play baseball as well as football at Penn. "He throws 88 miles per hour," Seddon said. "He could make [the baseball team] a power very quickly in this league." If Searles chooses to sign with the Pirates, he will not be able to play either baseball or football in the Ivy League. Other colleges permit a professional athlete in one sport to compete at the collegiate level in another, but the eight Ivy League universities do not. "If you sign a baseball contract you can't play football," Seddon said. "It's Ivy League rules." Searles had planned on playing football exclusively at Penn until last spring, when Huntington baseball coach Harry Walla helped the hurler get noticed as a baseball player. "John was really serious about pursuing football over baseball," Walla said. "Earlier this season, as the football people began to get their ducks in a row, [they] sparked an interest and he kinda felt that was the way he was going to go." But Walla used his contacts with the Major League Baseball Scouting Bureau to get a scout to evaluate Searles. "[The scout] came down to a game in the spring and he was impressed," Walla said. "He brought down one of the people that works for the Scouting Bureau and he was definitely impressed and that morning they sent out a report." Soon Searles had 10 scouts with radar guns behind home plate during his starts. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays flew him to Florida to try out after Memorial Day, but the Pirates were the team that most coveted Searles. "When I saw him pitch, Pittsburgh continued to pursue him," Seddon said. "The other teams dropped off him because they felt there's no way he'd be able to be signed because he got into Wharton." While Walla only advises Searles to listen to what people have to say, Seddon has been trying desperately to convince the right-handed hurler not to sign with the Pirates. "This is great for a high school 'C' student who's going to John Jones College," Seddon said. "But not for a kid who's got this opportunity. "The whole picture is 'don't sign if you get into the Wharton School and you have a chance to play football and baseball in college because you will be worth a lot more in the end of your junior year,'" Seddon added. Bagnoli and the Penn football staff are not as opposed to Searles signing with the Pirates, however. "I've spoken to the football people and they were pretty good about understanding that I got drafted and it was unexpected," Searles said. "I think they understand that it's a great opportunity." Although Searles expects to make a decision within the next month, he has no definitive timetable. If he decides to sign with the Pirates, Searles will be assigned to Rookie Ball in Bradenton, Fla. If he decides to compete in Penn athletics, he'll arrive on campus in late August for pre-season football practice.