Imagine having a prolific high school career that gets you drafted, and then in your first year of college, you get sidelined by a season-ending elbow injury. That’s exactly what happened to Hornets redshirt freshman starting pitcher Justin Dillon.

Dillon came to Sacramento State from El Dorado High School where he excelled at both hitting and pitching. He was the Sierra Valley Conference MVP in 2012 after going 9-1 and had nine complete games. At the plate, he batted .516 with nine home runs.

All of his high school success led him to get drafted in the 39th round of the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft to the Colorado Rockies. Dillon was excited to know that he had the opportunity to go pro.

“It was definitely a dream come true, it’s my dream to play professional ball,” Dillon said. “It was a humbling experience to know that some of my work payed off.

Dillon had the difficult decision to follow his dream or play college ball at Sac State.

“I definitely thought about signing for awhile, but I talked to my family and talked with my coach at the time and it just came down to the best option that would be to go to school for awhile,” Dillon said.

Unfortunately for Dillon, following his successful high school campaign, he ran into one of the more common injuries that plagues pitchers today, an issue with his elbow. It is referred to as Tommy John where the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow becomes stretched or torn.

Pitchers in every level of baseball are increasingly becoming more prone to this injury due to the amount of stress the arm goes through at a young age. Many kids are playing baseball at the youth level on year-round teams and are throwing much more than their arms can handle.

Since the first surgery in 1974 where players had a 1-100 chance of coming back, odds are now on the side of the pitcher as they have around a 90 percent chance of recovering fully. Dillon is just another one of those statistics.

Dillon sat out his freshman season by taking a redshirt in 2013 to rest up in order to contribute this year.

“Honestly, it was extremely tough just because watching the whole team play and you’re sitting there and can’t really work on anything besides mental reps,” Dillon said. “You remember where you’re at when you first got hurt and when you come back, you are nowhere near that and you just have to keep working and working to get back into shape.”

The 6-foot-4 right hander was put on a pitch count to begin the 2014 season, but has recently been let loose on opposing teams. His best outing came on April 27 on the road against Western Athletic Conference foe CSU Bakersfield.

Dillon carried a no hitter into the eighth inning of that game and got his second win of the season and first as a starter.

“It wasn’t going through my head really, but in the back of your head you know what’s going on and it’s just one of those things where I had the confidence in the defense behind me at all times,” Dillon said.

Helping Dillon get back to game ready was sophomore catcher Dane Fujinaka who has caught the majority of the games this season for the Hornets.

“He’s improved a lot from the beginning of the year and his past two starts were really good where he was throwing a lot of strikes,” Fujinaka said.

Head coach Reggie Christiansen has also been impressed with Dillon’s progression the last few times he’s gone out there.

“He continues to go out there and give us the chance to win,” Christiansen said. “ I’ve thought the last two times out he’s done that.”

Dillon has thrown 30.2 innings pitched in eight starts, the low inning count due to his pitch count. He is 3-0 and the team is 7-2 in games started by Dillon. Dillon believes that the sky’s the limit for this team has they head closer to the Western Athletic Conference Tournament.

“With this team and the ability that we have, if we come to play, I believe we can go pretty far,” Dillon said.