After long journey, Quaker Valley grad Ethan Moore settling into new home at Murray State

Over the past two years, former Quaker Valley standout Ethan Moore has been on a journey that’s taken him from Western Pennsylvania to Kent State and now to Oklahoma, where he’s on the baseball diamond at Murray State College.

In 39 games at his new school, Moore has hit .299, tallied 25 RBIs and hit 12 doubles and three home runs while playing third base and recording a fielding percentage of .908 for the Aggies. But the process to get to where he is today has been an interesting one for the former Quaker who was a part of Quaker Valley’s WPIAL and PIAA football championship team in 2017.

During that season, Moore said he dislocated his shoulder multiple times. He said it would immediately pop back into place, but over time the injury got worse. Heading into his senior year, Moore was diagnosed with a torn labrum.

Rather than sit out his final year of high school football, Moore played with a brace that allowed him to throw and kept his shoulder in place. He went on to throw for 1,411 yards and 10 touchdowns and also rushed for 537 yards and 11 touchdowns.

Then surgery came, and Moore’s doctor delivered some disappointing news.

“My doctor didn’t really want me to play baseball again,” Moore said. “He said it was going to be difficult.”

Despite Moore’s talents on the football field, he was just as good on the baseball diamond. He committed to Kent State as a sophomore and played a vital role for the Quakers during his sophomore and junior seasons.

So getting baseball taken away from him for both his senior year of high school and freshman year of college was a difficult journey. It was filled with the tedious work of going to rehab and working through the entire recovery process.

“I couldn’t throw or hit. I could only lift with my legs, and I lost a lot of weight,” Moore said. “It was hard to just want to keep doing it. It felt like it would be a lot easier to just quit and just kind of move on with my life. A lot of days it was just boring and it was just getting through the rehab process without giving up on baseball.”

Moore credited sticking with the sport he loves to his parents Jason and Cassie, who told him to stick to the process and keep working.

When Moore got to Kent State last year, he started to play catch but still couldn’t participate in practices; he couldn’t even throw across the diamond until last summer. Then, he got some more unfortunate news.

“I didn’t really get to do a whole lot while I was there and then covid came around and they were just like ‘Listen, you are at the bottom of the depth chart, you are injured, I think you should just go to a junior college,’ ” Moore said.

With both his family and his girlfriend in the area, it was a tough decision for Moore to continue to pursue baseball, but the former Quaker entered the transfer portal and said he heard from four or five schools within an hour. One of them happened to be Murray State College. Even though he heard from about 15 or 20 schools, he said Murray State was a no-brainer after talking to the staff and seeing the facilities.

“They offered me a nice scholarship and they sent me their facilities, and they’ve been successful in the past,” Moore said. “I was just excited about being a part of a winning program that I could contribute to. It just immediately felt like a good fit”

Moore was still going through the rehab process when he got to Oklahoma, but he said the school made it easy to work through his rehab and get ready for the fall season. As he started getting healthier, Moore started to feel more like himself.

He started to fall in love with the game again.

“I’m excited to go to the field every day, and I appreciate the opportunities that I get and what I get to do it every day,” Moore said. “It rejuvenated my love for the game. There was a point where I was upset with sports, and I was upset with how injuries went down. But once I had the opportunity to play again, I fell back in love with baseball and working hard again.”

That hard work has been paying off this season. In Murray State’s first game, Moore went 3 for 4 with a double, a home run and six RBIs. He’s tallied 12 total multi-hit games this season and has recorded 16 extra-base hits.

But Moore is still working his way back into the form he displayed at Quaker Valley.

“The fall was my getting back into the swing of things where I still had the excuse of ‘Oh he hasn’t played,’ ” Moore said. “Now, it’s time for me to build myself as a baseball player and really get back to the level that I was. I feel like I’m finally starting to get there.”

Moore said he’ll probably stay at Murray State this year and next but he’s hoping to turn his time in Oklahoma to another Division I offer down the line.