Listening to Brian Knight talk about his former varsity baseball all-star Mike Lennox is like hearing a proud parent gush over his own kid.

The coach appeared all-too willing to dish on Lennox, who earned a spot on the Group AA first-team all-state squad after setting multiple records for Brentsville District during the spring season before graduating in June.

"And the best thing I can say about him is what I said before, he is the type of kid that every parent that has children, they want their children to grow up like that" said Knight.

Neither Knight nor Lennox are returning to the Tigers' dugout in the spring. Knight revealed that he will be teaching math at Patriot High School this school year and helping out as a varsity baseball coach in the spring.

He made the move, he said, because his youngest son is set to attend Patriot eventually.

But with the recognition that Lennox was one of four members of Brentsville's Class of 2011 to receive first-team all-state honors during the spring sports season, Knight explained that it took a special kid dedicated to on-the-field excellence to achieve what Lennox did.

In his senior season, Lennox hit .449 for the Tigers and tied a school record with 11 doubles. He clubbed four home runs en route to collecting 31 hits on the season in 69 at-bats. He put himself in a tie for third place all-time in Brentsville history for RBIs in a single season with 29, according to Knight. His slugging percentage topped out at .783 and his on-base average clipped .524.

Those stats helped lead Brentsville to the second round of regions, and the team came two runs away from qualifying for states despite finishing the year with a 10-12 record.

Knight recalled his "more than one coach" told him that Lennox "hits the ball harder than anybody they've ever seen."

Lennox explained that hitting as the team's clean-up batter in the fourth position of the line up really didn't mean that much more pressure was applied to him compared to when he batted over .400 in his junior year, hitting at the bottom of the Brentsville line-up.

"I guess you know, last year, obviously, we lost a lot of seniors that helped, that were really good," said Lennox, who is playing football for Old Dominion University this fall season. "I didn't really look at hitting fourth as any other position in the line up... you've still got to go to bat."

The 18-year-old from Bristow set a career record for Brentsville with a .393 batting average. His 70 career RBIs put him fifth on the rank of Tigers all-time, an extra special designation given that he played his senior season after coming back from a broken collar bone.

If Lennox had a weak spot, Knight attributed it to his defense, but even then, the numbers were near sterling. Lennox only made two errors in the outfield during his senior season but recorded just one assist too.

Meanwhile, his offensive numbers rose every year he played on the team and "obviously his number of innings went up every year," said Knight.

Despite his prowess on the diamond, Lennox explained that he decided his "heart was more into football," and that he "enjoyed it a little more than baseball." Given that playing sports in college is "like a full-time job," according to Lennox, he stuck with just going on the gridiron.

The criminal Justice major, played fullback, linebacker and punter for the Tigers and checks in at 6-foot-2, 210-pounds, meaning he is certainly more-than-able to handle himself on either field.

"He can pick up just about any sport," said Knight. "You can throw him into just about any of that and he'll do well at it."