​WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (WAVY) – With William & Mary’s baseball team having won five-straight CAA games to make it its longest conference winning streak since 2022, it’s a fun time to be a fan of the Tribe. A lot of that success starts at the top — literally — through the exploits of leadoff hitter Ben Parker.

”He’s been nothing but a team guy. Nothing but focused on the team,” said first-year head coach Rob McCoy.

In his second season with the Tribe since transferring from Division III Whitman College, Parker, a graduate student known by teammates as “Pumps,” has had an eventual two years.

“My goal coming out of high school was to be the best Division III baseball player I could be, aid Parker, coming off an All-CAA first-team selection. “COVID gave me a few more years and now I’m pretty fortunate to be in this spot.”

Currently, Parker is on a 30-game hitting streak and leads the CAA in batting average, hits and RBI.

“Never seen it. It’s quite the feat,” McCoy said. “You don’t really realize until it starts to be talked about. I’ll give the kid credit, he doesn’t talk about it too much. … He’s setting his new ceiling. It’s literally the law of averages that gets him out. … There’s no ceiling on that. He can help us win a championship. He can go onto the next level and put himself into professional baseball and beyond.”

And if you ask Parker about the 30-game hitting streak, or the fact that he broke six all-time school records at Whitman before coming here, or even the ‘Pumps’ nickname, the response is always the same.

“I’m trying to go into every game with the same mentality — really just getting up for every game and bringing the same energy, and trying not to think about it,” Parker said.

And now, after firmly placing himself in the running for conference player of the year and just two games shy of tying the post-stat-tracking hitting streak record at William & Mary, Parker is focused on bringing CAA championship number eight back to Williamsburg.

“I think we set ourselves up well in conference to this point,” Parker said. “Winning a conference tournament would be … amazing.

“The team dynamic this year is so awesome. I’ve never been on a collegiate team that’s just so fun and relentless every single day. We bring it every game. It’s really fun to be a part of.”