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Gold Glove baseball player joins Tiger Hall of Fame for a second time

Aaron Sanderholm, the starting centerfielder and an integral part of the 1997 JUCO World Series winning Cowley College baseball team that is in the Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame, will be honored for his Gold Glove caliber defense and timely hitting by being inducted into the Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday, January 28.

Sanderholm graduated from Ark City High School in 1995. At ACHS, he was a First Team All-Ark Valley League performer as a senior. Former Cowley College head baseball coach Rick Holman had an opportunity to coach Sanderholm in Babe Ruth League baseball.

“Rick told me at the next level I would need to move to the outfield due to me being left-handed,” Sanderholm said. “From there, it was a matter of learning the position and how to read balls off the bat. I didn’t know how good Cowley’s baseball program was, but when I got here, it was a different beast. I had no idea what I was getting into.”

Sanderholm eventually settled in and helped the Tigers capture back-to-back conference and region titles and a total of 104 wins over two seasons.

While playing Gold Glove caliber defense in the outfield, Sanderholm batted .412 in his freshman season.

“The competition level is what I deem a lot of my success to,” Sanderholm said. “I was always trying to get better and keep up with everybody here, and that pushed me to be the player that I became. You didn’t want to disappoint Dave (Burroughs) or Lefty (Darren Burroughs).”

After batting .340 as a sophomore, Sanderholm finished his Tiger career with 117 hits, 32 doubles, six triples, and 27 stolen bases. He received the Cowley College Best Defensive Player of the Year Award in 1997 and committed only one error in his two years at the school. He was also the recipient of the Scholar-Athlete Award as a sophomore.

“Although there were no defensive metrics and analytics at that time to measure how talented he was, his play became the barometer to all centerfielders following,” said former Tiger head baseball coach Dave Burroughs.

Sanderholm was beloved by his Tiger teammates, including former Major League baseball standout Travis Hafner.

“Aaron did not take anything for granted, he always worked his tail off and hustled like it was his last game,” Hafner said. “Aaron was a great teammate and a winner. Some of his elite qualities may not have shown up in the box score, but people who know baseball and were on that 1997 team knew that Aaron was the engine that got things started and was extremely valuable.”

Sanderholm went on to play baseball at Washburn University, where he garnered All-MIAA Second Team All-Conference honors and was the recipient of the team’s 1999 Most Valuable Player Award. He finished with a career .386 batting average with the Ichabods and received All-Academic honors.

After his two seasons playing for Washburn, he spent a third year with the program as a volunteer assistant. He finished his degree at Southwestern College in Winfield and got a call from Dave Burroughs asking Sanderholm to work with the outfielders.

He served as a volunteer assistant with the Tiger baseball team in 2001 and served as a full-time assistant coach in 2002-2004, before returning as a volunteer assistant in 2011-2014, and 2016-2019, helping Cowley capture eight conference titles, five region championships and appear in five JUCO World Series tournaments.

“I learned how to coach kids and achieve a goal,” Sanderholm said. “As much as I enjoyed being successful, I hated losing. Coach Dave always said you can’t get a mile’s worth of better every day, but you can get an inch worth. So every day, you have to work that little bit because you add those inches up, and the next thing you know, you have gone the distance and made yourself a lot better.”

Sanderholm is looking forward to going into the Tiger Athletic Hall of Fame as an individual and joining fellow Tiger teammates Travis Hafner, Aaron Akin, and Sam Scott, as well as Tiger coaches Dave Burroughs, Darren Burroughs, and Scott Hennessey in the elite group.

“It’s a different feel going in as an individual. It is quite an honor,” Sanderholm said. “I just looked at myself as a cog in the wheel, so this is really special.”

Sanderholm has been employed at Ark City Glass for 19 years, the past two of which he has spent as owner of the business. His wife, Lindsay, has been the head dance coach at Cowley for the past 24 years, and their daughter, Madilynn, recently graduated from the school in May.

“Cowley has always had a family feel and has always been home to our family,” Sanderholm said. “It’s a special place.

The couple has two other children, Easton and Lilliann. Sanderholm keeps in touch with his former Tiger baseball coaches and a core group of players from the title-winning team. He hopes to reconnect with his former Cowley teammates during the Hall of Fame festivities.

“I have been to so many of these that I know what it’s like, but it will be a different feeling going in,” Sanderholm said.