Future Gopher remains supreme on the mound in Zumbrota-Mazeppa farewell tour

May 11—ZUMBROTA — It's been 19 months since Hudson Ohm agreed to play baseball for the University of Minnesota and in that time, he's only improved.

With about a week and a half left of his senior year, Ohm is trying to extend his final high school baseball season as long as possible while simultaneously preparing for the next step.

To cap a memorable career with the Cougars, he recently made the cover of the Breakdown Sports Media 2026 Season Guidebook for Minnesota High School Baseball. He was named the publication's Preseason Player of the Year.

"To be honest, I had no clue," Ohm said. "At first, I saw it on my club ball team's social media, on their story on Instagram, and I was pretty happy, but yeah, it's pretty cool to see that. I didn't think it was going to be me. I knew I had a shot to be on the cover, but it's pretty cool to see that. We have the book at our house, so to keep that for years to come, it will be kind of cool to look at."

The 6-foot-2 pitcher/outfielder boasts a 4-0 record on the mound and a 1.40 ERA with 52 strikeouts and 11 walks across 25 innings. He's arguably just as good at the plate, hitting .383. Ohm has recorded 17 hits, including two home runs and three triples, 14 runs scored, eight RBIs and holds a .638 slugging percentage.

Ohm, a four-year varsity player, tallied 13 strikeouts against last season's Section 1, Class 2A runner-up, Caledonia, on May 7, just shy of his single-game season high of 15 and career high of 17.

Z-M head coach AJ Yusten has coached in the Cougars baseball program in some capacity since he was 16. He has known Ohm and his family for more than 15 years and even babysat Ohm when the senior was a young child. Yusten, who has been an Industrial Technology teacher in the Z-M school district for four years and has Ohm as a student in his classroom twice a day, has witnessed almost all of Ohm's baseball journey.

"He's a super fun-loving young man," Yusten said. "He's always been intense on the mound, but this year, he seems to have taken a really big leap. ... He's really fine-tuning his craft now, so I'm really excited to see him on the trajectory he's on, and I'm just really excited to see him the rest of the season and in the future."

Coming from a family of college baseball players, including his dad and older brother Preston, who is a redshirt freshman at the University of St. Thomas, Ohm has had plenty of positive examples to model himself after on the diamond.

Ohm has developed his own regime over the years, which includes training at The Yard in Rochester with local pitching legend Mitch Brown, and even has his pre-game routine down to the minute.

"That's one of the things I can help him with, is making sure that he's in the right place at the right time," Yusten said. "Because a guy like Hudson, he gets a ton of coaching besides us. So he checks a lot of the boxes for us. We just have to make sure that he's in the right headspace, he's mentally and physically prepared, he's where he needs to be at the right time and that shows in his performance."