Barth Being Barth: Augustana's Multi-Sport National Champion

National Champion. That is one way that many Augustana fans know professional prospect and current Viking baseball player Jordan Barth. The junior was a key member of the 2018 Augustana Viking National Championship baseball team while earning NSIC Freshman of the Year honors. 

What some may not know is that Barth is a multi-time national champion and is also a World Champion racquetball player. Growing up in Cold Spring, Minnesota, Barth began a racquetball career at the age of two. 

“My uncle owns a health club that pretty much my whole family goes to and my mom worked at,” Barth explained. “My mom kind of just put me down on the court when I was two, obviously I couldn’t get out of the court. I just started hitting the ball around and by the time I was five I played in my first tournament.”

That tournament he played in as a five-year-old? It was in the eight-year-old age bracket. 

Barth is a career .397 hitter for the Vikings’ baseball team and was hitting .471 batting average through 13 games in 2020 before the season was cut short. Among the record books, Barth owns the most hits in a single game (six), most doubles in a game (four), total bases in a game (13) and most RBI’s in a game (eight). He earned All-America honors as a sophomore in 2019 and was the NSIC Preseason Player of the Year entering the 2020 season. 

Before he became one of the best hitters in Viking history, Barth was busy winning national championships in racquetball. He won every age division with the exception of the under-18 because he had started to focus more on baseball. 

“I was playing Legion Baseball in high school and I didn’t want to miss any more games,” Barth said. “I had won every age division to that point and there was only one other person who had done that, and he was a very successful pro racquetball player later.”

Throughout his career, Barth also captured two World Championships in singles action and another pair of World Championships in doubles play all at the juniors level. In the men’s division, placing all players together, Barth held a ranking as high as No. 22 in the world, a mark he achieved as a senior in high school. 

He has taken a competition break from racquetball to compete at the highest level at Augustana, with hopes of moving onto the next level when he has completed his collegiate career. But he has also found ways to keep it part of his life while on the Augustana campus. 

“I took a racquetball class my freshman year and everyone was like ‘oh my gosh, have you played before’?” he added. “I just said yeah, I’ve played a couple of times.

“A former teammate, Michael Brandt, was in the class too. He was probably the next best racquetball player in the class. We had a bracket and in the final week, we played each other. It was an 8 a.m., I was tired and wanted to go back to bed, so I just said I might as well try. I beat him 15-0, 15-0, went back to my dorm and went to bed.”

In more recent times, Barth has grabbed a racket and gone into the Elmen Center courts when he felt like he was struggling at the plate. 

It is a recipe that has worked for Barth as he has struck out just 39 times in 426 at-bats over his 112-game career. In 154 at-bats as a sophomore, Barth struck out just 15 times and was on-pace to do even better in 2020 with just three strikeouts in 51 at-bats this season. 

As Barth moves forward, the racquetball competition is on the backburner focusing on his college career.

“I am just trying to focus on baseball to have a good career and hopefully take it to the next level,” Barth said. “I can always play racquetball until I’m 80.

“Obviously racquetball has really helped me in baseball, every single aspect of it. Just instincts to running the bases, fielding a ground ball, throwing, really everything can be related back to racquetball. It has helped me greatly.”