Diamond Hogs 2020 Signee Spotlight: IMG Academy RHP Heston Tole

It didn’t take long for Heston Kjerstad to establish himself as a fan favorite.

The slugger from Amarillo, Texas, burst onto the scene in 2018 when he hit .332 with a team-high 14 home runs and was named SEC Freshman of the Year. Naturally, fans flooded his social media accounts.

There was just one problem: Kjerstad didn’t have an Instagram at the time. Instead, a high school sophomore named Heston Tole - a fellow Texan who happened to be committed to Arkansas - received all of the attention.

“I was tagged in all of his pictures and everyone thought I was him,” Tole said. “They’d be messaging me on Instagram, DMing me and stuff like that. We would laugh about that.”

Fast forward a couple of years and Tole is set to play for the Razorbacks himself as a member of their touted 2020 signing class. Originally from Wichita Falls, Texas, the right-hander has spent the last three years at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., and is the No. 473 overall recruit in the country, according to Perfect Game.

Incredibly, his commitment to Arkansas actually predates his move to IMG. Tole pulled the trigger before ever appearing in a high school game, picking the Razorbacks over SEC foes Ole Miss and Alabama in December of his freshman year.

A visit to a packed Baum-Walker Stadium for a game against Ole Miss during the 2015 season cemented his desire to play at Arkansas. After attending a camp in the summer of 2016, Tole was back in Fayetteville for a football game that fall when then-assistant Tony Vitello extended an offer.

Despite the fact the Razorbacks were coming off a losing season, it didn’t take long for him to make a decision.

“Ever since I was 12 or 13 years old when I went to that game, I always knew that’s kind of where I wanted to go,” Tole said. “I walked away from that wide-eyed and thought it was really cool, so after probably a week of conversations with my family, I made my decision and knew as soon as I did that it was going to be the best one for me.”

Since then, Vitello left to become the head coach at Tennessee and pitching coach Wes Johnson took the same job with the Minnesota Twins. Tole hasn’t regretted it, though, as the Razorbacks have reached new heights with back-to-back trips to the College World Series and built the No. 3 signing class in the country for the Class of 2020, according to Perfect Game.

Tole followed up his commitment with a freshman season in which he posted a 2.43 ERA in 54 2/3 innings at Bowie High, a small Class 3A school located about an hour north of Fort Worth. Still a two-way player at the time, he also hit .412 as a first baseman and outfielder.

That summer, one of his friends - Searcy native and former Arkansas catcher Andrew Stanley - announced he would play his senior season at IMG. Looking for a way to be better prepared for when he got to Arkansas, Tole checked it out himself and was accepted on July 4.

In addition to playing alongside fellow Division I prospects and professional hopefuls, he was also excited that he’d learn time management and other off-the-field skills to get him ready for college. He lived in a dorm with a roommate and had to balance schoolwork and practice on his own.

“A lot of people when they get to college, they aren’t ready for things like that,” Tole said. “They’re used to their parents doing their laundry and helping them with their homework and making sure they’re up in time.”

On the field, Tole dislocated his left shoulder on a swing before his first season at IMG. His swing never was quite the same after that, leading to him struggling at the plate as a sophomore.

Throw in the fact that he continued to grow taller and after the WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., the fall of his junior year, he put away the bat and became a pitcher only.

“It was kind of obvious that I was probably going to be a pitcher because of my body type and the way I started throwing the ball,” Tole said. “After talking to my coaches, after talking to…everybody at Arkansas, some people in my corner, we made a decision to just pitch and I really liked it because I get to focus solely on that.”