Jack Thomson: Lewis & Clark's new home run king

Thomson has been the centerpiece of a dramatic transformation, though, one that saw his Lewis & Clark team earn some championship hardware. Over the past two years, Thomson has broken 13 program records, including this year in setting new single-season and career home run marks, to lead the Pioneers to their first-ever Northwest Conference Tournament championship.

“He played a huge role,” Pioneers manager Matt Kosderka said. “He’s played a huge role for the past five years.”

People still tend to get the two Lewis & Clark baseball programs confused, but now when they recognize the name because of the historic success of the NAIA powerhouse in Lewiston, Idaho, Thomson has some bragging rights of his own, with the Pioneers tying program records this season with 31 overall wins and a 15-9 conference record.

“Now they say: ‘They’re pretty good,’” Thomson said. “I’m like: ‘Yeah, we are pretty good.’”

A graduate of St. Ignatius in 2018, Thomson has emerged as one in a string of successes this season for the San Francisco-based private school. Within recent weeks, St. Ignatius celebrated a CIF Northern California Division II championship, and saw another alumnus, professional pitcher Matt Krook, earn his first major league callup with the New York Yankees.

Thomson’s myriad accolades are still coming. Last month, he was named the American Baseball Coaches Association Rawlings Division III Region 10 Position Player of the Year. He earned another prestigious honor June 1, being named to the ABCA Rawlings Division III All-American team. He is the first Pioneers player to earn All-American honors since Royce McDaniel in 1961.

ABCA All-American Player of the Year honors will be announced later this month. He has already garnered D3baseball.com National Player of the Year honors.

Thomson also rewrote the Lewis & Clark record books, hitting 23 homers this season as he smashed the previous single-season mark of 15, set by Chris Dutton in 1987. After falling one home run shy of the single-season record last year with 14, there was a sense he would get the chance to eclipse it this year. Potentially surpassing the 20-home run mark — 23 homers in 45 games — wasn’t really on the radar.

“Not even in my wildest dreams had I ever imaged it,” Thomson said. “But they all just kind of started to add up and I was like: ‘20, that doesn’t even really make any sense.’”

The previous Lewis & Clark career home-run mark of 39 was set by Bill Fellows in 1987. Thomson finishes his career with 48 homers, ranking 17th all-time among NCAA Division III players.

“Not only offensive numbers but also his leadership,” Kosderka said. “On the field, in the dugout, he just found a way to take it to a whole new level. And that was a big part of it, for sure.”

On the penultimate week of the regular season, Thomson throttled past both record on the same day, with a two-home run performance April 7 in a 9-6 loss at Willamette. His first homer of the day, a two-run shot in the first inning, gave the Pioneers a 2-0 lead.

“Honestly, I forgot it was the career record one because it was kind of a big moment in the game,” Thomson said. “So, it was kind of a delayed gratification. So, it was cool.”

His second homer of the game, a two-run shot in the ninth inning, broke the single-season record.

“It was just kind of a relief, honestly, because I had a lot of games to get it done and it felt like a lot of pressure on my shoulders just to hit it,” Thomson said. “And then when I hit it, it was more like a thousand pounds off my shoulders. It was more of like a relief than like a big celebration in the moment.”

Lewis & Clark won the last two games at Willamette to take the series. More importantly, the two teams met in the Northwest Conference Tournament opener April 21, with the Pioneers rolling to a 10-4 victory. Lewis & Clark dropped the second game of the tourney 9-3 to Pacific University but rallied through the elimination bracket with three straight wins, including back-to-back victories of 6-4 and 10-7 in an April 23 doubleheader against regular-season conference champion Pacific to claim the program’s first-ever tournament championship.

“It was a special, special feeling,” Thomson said. “We were up going into the inning and then they had scored like four or five runs … and then it was like: ‘Please, can we get this last guy out.’”

Thomson went 7 for 16 with a home run, five doubles and six RBIs in the tournament, finishing the year with the team triple crown, batting .382 with 23 home runs and 55 RBIs.

Now 23, Thomson has one more season of athletic eligibility remaining. He received and extra year for the pandemic season in 2020, and a blanket season in ’21 because not all teams played that year. He is now set to transfer to the NCAA Division I program at University of Portland next season.

He leaves a legacy as one of the greatest players in Lewis & Clark history. The Pioneers have their sights set on bettering the program next year, as they went 1-2 in the Division III regional tournament.

“I think the state of it now is the expectation is not only just to compete and be in the middle of the conference,” Thomson said, “but the expectation is to win conference championships.”