Gillis a Knights star

NASHUA - Logan Gillis finally gets to call Holman Stadium home.

He played his youth baseball on the Nashua Northwest Field, just outside the facility that serves as the home to at least two city schools.

The thing was, Gillis' family moved to Merrimack when he was in the eighth grade, and then he opted to go to prep school (Lawrence Academy) instead.

"Coming back to the old stomping grounds," he said, "should be a lot of fun."

And it's been just that, as he has started off hitting .378, hitting second in the order for the Nashua Silver Knights, going into Tuesday's game against Martha's Vineyard. Gillis is anxious to show the locals what he can do, as players kind of disappear from the spotlight when they go prep.

And sometimes, as in Gillis' case, they miss out on state championships. There's no doubt he would have been a valuable member of the Merrimack High School team that won the Class L (now Division I) title in 2007.

"I would have been a member of a state championship team," he said with a grin. "I definitely rooted for them. I didn't know a whole lot about the program at Merrimack, but it was definitely good to see the hometown team win a state championship. I knew a couple of the guys on that team, so I knew they were excited."

Gillis decided to go to Lawrence Academy for five years (including a pre-college year) before heading off to Bentley College. His father had gone to a prep school, so he wanted to give that life a try.

"I always wanted to do the prep school route," Gillis said. "I lived there since my freshman year, and it was a lot of fun. I loved it. It was a great experience and it better prepared me for college."

Had he not moved to Merrimack or gone prep, Gillis figured he'd have attended Bishop Guertin or Nashua North. Ironically, both use Holman during the spring. But, he said, the prep school baseball experience was similar to what he would have endured here in the area.

"It's quite close," he said. "You always have a couple of your Division I players and your Division II players. My school was predominantly a hockey school, so we had a lot of the hockey guys that came over and played baseball as well. ... So you get a good mix of athletes."

In fact, Gillis was in that mix as a three-sport athlete at LA - football, hockey and baseball. But baseball is his game.

"They're building the program up (at Lawrence Academy)," he said. "They've gotten a lot of 'just baseball' players which is nice to see."

Silver Knights manager Mike Chambers wasted no time in securing Gillis, a scrappy competitor whom Chambers had admired this year watching him play at Bentley College. "He's the same type of player I was," Chambers said. "The kind of player I like to have on my team."

Gillis found the transition manageable from prep school to college ball at Bentley, where he hit .313 this past spring with 26 RBI. The biggest change was, as most players say, playing 35 or so more games than in high school. Last summer he played his ball at Newport R.I. in the New England Collegiate League for a few weeks on a temporary contract and then went down to the Virginia-based Valley League.

Of course, one of the reasons he may be hitting so well is the fact he hits with the wooden bat at Bentley, as all Northeast-10 League schools do.

A marketing major, Gillis is doing a pretty good job of selling himself with his play.

Welcome home, Logan.