In his first three seasons with Warren Central’s baseball team, Tyler Vroman had a total of 13 varsity at-bats.

He’s got a whole lot more than that ahead of him.

Vroman recently accepted an offer to continue his baseball career at Copiah-Lincoln Community College. He’ll be a preferred walk-on, but will receive an academic scholarship — a common practice in college baseball, where only 11.7 scholarships are available per team.

Vroman scored a 26 on the ACT and plans to major in exercise science.

“It was just one of those things that, after all of these years, it was something that I’ve always wanted to do and it’s finally going to happen,” said Vroman, who was also a starting center and long snapper on Warren Central’s football team. “It is kind of weird to think that I’m going to play up there. It’s just kind of hard to play two sports and get picked up for one. Especially baseball, because it’s so competitive.”

Vroman played sparingly in his freshman and sophomore seasons, and then missed all of 2015 with an elbow injury. He cracked the regular starting lineup for the first time as a senior and made a huge impact.

The big, slugging first baseman led the Vikings in hitting with a .403 average, and drove in 20 runs as the team finished 21-8 and won the Division 4-6A championship for the second consecutive year.

Vroman was lightly recruited during the season, but wrangled a tryout with Co-Lin in mid-May and received an offer to walk on about a week later.

“I knew I was having a pretty good year, and I just thought I should go try out and at least put myself out there,” Vroman said. “I was pretty interested in Co-Lin because I had tried out for football there, and I felt like it was a really good environment for me. So I tried out and they called me back, and that’s where I wanted to go.”

Vroman is the fifth Warren Central player this spring who has either been offered a scholarship or a walk-on spot with one of Mississippi’s junior colleges. Shortstop Brooks Boolos (Northwest Mississippi), pitchers Taft Nesmith (Southwest Mississippi) and Booth Buys (Hinds) and utility player Conner Wilkinson (Co-Lin) are also headed to the next level.

Vroman is good friends with Wilkinson and was actually at Wilkinson’s house when he got the call from Co-Lin. He said having some friends at Co-Lin swayed his decision.

“I think it influenced me just a little bit, because I know a few guys who are going to Co-Lin to play football, too,” Vroman said.

Vroman said he also got some recruiting attention from Holmes for baseball and Mississippi Delta for football, but nothing ever fully developed. Despite the light presence on the recruiting trail, he said he kept working and never lost faith that something would shake out.

“The way my year was going, my focus was always on staying in the cage. I felt like I could always do something better. I knew that eventually someone would pick me up. It was just in the back of my mind at the time,” Vroman said.