Tyler Wiik seemingly never gets tired of being on a baseball field. Even after catching every one of the Tigers’ 27 games this season, the recent Northwestern grad went right into the Legion baseball season and is back behind the plate for the Northern Valley Chargers.

In fact, during his four seasons with the high school team, Wiik caught every game from his first as a freshman to his last as a senior.

“At the moment, I’m feeling good. I know all the games will catch up to me at some point but for now, I’m still feeling pretty good,” said Wiik about the heavy workload.

While baseball is Wiik’s primary sport and the one that he’ll play at Bloomsburg University, he’s put up some pretty good numbers on the golf course as well. Wiik averaged a 76 with the golf team this past season and was praised by coach Tim Miller as having learned the game as he went along.

“Tyler had no instruction whatsoever in golf. He’s a very good catcher on the baseball team, but he’s worked hard to improve his game by seven strokes from last year,” Miller told the Times News in the fall about Wiik’s performance on the golf course.

Focus and dedication have led Wiik through his days at Northwestern. Whether it’s learning the game of golf or making himself more of a complete player on the baseball field, Wiik has stood up to the challenges ahead of him.

When Duran Porrino returned to coach the baseball team after a one-year absence, he gave Wiik two chores for his senior season. First, he was going to let him work with the team’s pitchers to call the pitches in games. In the past, the calls always came from the dugout, but Wiik’s development behind the plate and knowledge of the game was so good that Porrino handed over those duties to him. Secondly, Porrino wanted him to be more than just the strong defensive catcher that he was. Porrino challenged Wiik to focus on his offense for his senior season and he did just that, conquering both challenges and becoming a big part of the Tigers offense.

There’s no denying that the season Wiik put together helped lead Northwestern to the semifinals of the PIAA playoffs. That long run in his senior season is one of the things that he’ll definitely remember about playing for Northwestern.

“It was everything. It was everything you could ask for as a player in high school baseball,” said Wiik. “You never expect to get that far, you hope you will get there, but you can never really expect that you’re going to be playing deep into states. You can never imagine what it feels like to be there and when you’re in the middle of it, you never want it to end. You can’t even think about losing.

“It’s something that I’ll grow from. I’ll cherish the experience and remember the good moments and the moments where we struggled and found something we could learn from. It was really eye-opening to play at the varsity level at first, and I grew so much and can take so much from the experience over those four years.”

Another thing that Wiik never thought about was being honored as the Times News/Lehigh Valley Health Network Baseball Player of the Year. For him, the focus remained on becoming the better all-around player that Porrino wanted him to be.

“I never expect to get any awards or anything, I just try to help the team out, but I wasn’t really focused on it,” Wiik explained. “I knew I was playing well all season, but I never thought about anything like this. I was just looking to help my team out and, in the end, that approach wound up helping me out, too.”

In some ways, Wiik will be starting over when he begins his baseball career at Bloomsburg, where he’ll major in criminal justice.

Instead of being the team leader that he has been the past couple of seasons, he’ll return to being that wide-eyed new guy learning the rigors of playing college baseball.

It will all become very real for Wiik as he starts team workouts shortly after he starts classes at Bloomsburg this fall. Graduating from Northwestern really drove home that life is entering another phase now, and there are going to be new challenges to conquer.

While playing Legion ball with some of his teammates from the Tigers, Wiik is still in that world where he gets to remember the recent past, but also has an eye on the near future when he trades in his Northwestern gear for a uniform with the Bloomsburg Huskies logo.

“It’s definitely sunk in that I’ll never wear a Tigers uniform again and high school is over,” Wiik said. “It’s just a part of life that you have to give up because everyone gets older and everybody has to give up things, and being a part of Northwestern High School baseball is something I have to give up, but I’m going to cherish it forever.”