Heritage junior Gaven French was named 2026 5Star Preps Baseball Offensive Player of the Year, presented by Garza Law Firm.
BY JESSE SMITHEY
Heritage baseball coach Robbie Bennett gets the same rhetorical question often when he tells people that his star player, Gaven French, still has another year left.
“Most people are like, ‘Holy cow, he was just a junior?'” Bennett said.
“People don’t realize he’s coming back next year. So, I’m excited.”
And why wouldn’t he be?
Garza Law is the proud sponsor of 5Star Preps spring sports awards.
French, the 2026 5Star Preps Offensive Player of the Year presented by Garza Law, helped Heritage have a season for the ages in the spring. He led the Mountaineers to their first-ever appearance in a TSSAA State Tournament and had the Mountaineers on the cusp of reaching the title-game round.
He hit .463 as a junior with 16 doubles, 17 home runs, 48 walks and 56 RBIs. Not to mention, he was 9-1 on the mound with 109 strikeouts and a 1.18 ERA in 65.1 innings pitched.
The two-way player has long been committed to the University of Tennessee.
He more than proved his credentials this past season.
“For him to just come straight out of basketball and into baseball and do what he did, he’s just a special athlete,” Bennett said. “Better than that, he’s just a really good kid. He’s a yes-sir, no-sir kid. Hitting wise, we get into the region tournament, and they’re walking him with a runner on first base. They’re walking him with nobody on. We’re playing Signal Mountain that first game, and they walked him the first two times. Every time somebody didn’t walk him, he hit a home run — in the substate and in the region. He had an awesome year.”
“He works when nobody is watching,” Bennett added. “He’s a 1,500-point scorer in basketball. Truth be known, if he played football, there’s no telling how good he’d be there. Obviously, his sophomore year, he started at quarterback for us, until he got hurt. He’s just a special athlete.”
French averaged 15.8 points per game for a Heritage boys’ basketball team that went 23-9, that barely lost to eventual 3A champion Alcoa in the District 5-3A championship and that fell just a few points shy of making the state sectionals (substate). He shot 39 percent from the 3-point line and 86 percent at the free-throw line.
But all while basketball transpired, French found ways to make sure his baseball skills remained sharp for the 2026 season. Sometimes that meant hitting and throwing bullpens on weekends or random off days during the week.
“I had to be ready to go,” French said. “I knew we had a really good team. I wanted to have my A-game to start off.”
Still, French said, it took a few weeks for him to reach full confidence in his swing once baseball season commenced.
“But once I got it back, I was fine,” he said.
Heritage finished the season 35-14. The Mountaineers had seven memorable battles with District 5-3A rival Alcoa, with Heritage winning the final one over the Tornadoes in the Region 3-3A Championship.
But when Coach Bennett looks back on the 2026 season that French had, he’ll always remember what French told him before Heritage faced Watertown in Game 2 of a best-of-three state sectional series.
Heritage led the series 1-0 and French was to take the mound that day to try and clinch the program’s first-ever trip to state.
“He told me before the game, ‘Get me one run,'” Bennett recalled. “And that’s all it took. He threw a gem.”
Heritage won the game 1-0. French struck out seven and walked one, allowing just five hits.
“As a competitor, that’s my mindset every time. I tell the guys to just give me one run and I got us,” French said. “That day in the bullpen, it felt really good. All four pitches were working in the pen. So I just told them, ‘Get me one run and I got the rest.” That happened.
“But that’s my mindset every time I go out is just try and dominate the team I’m pitching against.”
In four games at state, French went 5-for-12 at the plate with a home run, two doubles, four walks and five RBIs. He started one game on the mound, striking out 10 and allowing just two hits in five innings pitched.
Roughly two months removed from that week in Murfreesboro, French appreciates the accomplishment Heritage Baseball achieved. But he’d certainly like another crack at it in 2027.
“We’d never been to the state tournament before. So just getting there for the first time for our school and our coaching staff that had been there for 20 years, to be able to get there was really cool,” he said. “But we’re not satisfied, because we’re all competitors and we didn’t win it all. Looking back, it was a really fun time. But we didn’t finish the job. I wouldn’t say satisfaction, but it did feel good to get there.”
Between now and then, French plans to increase his velocity as a pitcher. Already blessed with a fastball that hits the 92 to 94-miles-per-hour, French wants that to jump up to 96-98 by the time he’s a senior.
He’s still in the midst of his travel ball season right now, though. At the end of July, he’ll head to Hoover, Ala., to play in the East Coast Pro, which will allow him to perform in front of Major League Baseball scouting directors. Then, in early August, he’ll play for the Kansas City Royals scout team out in California in the Area Code Games.
Slated to be a two-way player at Tennessee, French will continue to hone both his offensive talents and pitching abilities to keep every avenue ajar. Tennessee coach Josh Elander has told him to do that, as well, French said.
“Coach Elander said to do both for as long as you can, to see what the game does for you,” French said. “Right now, I think my pitching is probably ahead of my hitting, just numbers wise and what I like to do. But I’m going to try and do both as long as I can just to see how it plays out. Pitchers turn into hitters. Hitters turn into pitchers. Drew Gilbert came in as a pitcher only at Tennessee, and we see where he’s at now.
“I feel like I can hit with the best of them. I got confidence when I get into the box when I can. Baseball is hard. Being able to do both when I get into college is going to be difficult. But I feel like I can do it.”