(Mankato, MN) – The Mankato MoonDogs Baseball Club, a member of the Northwoods League, is proud to announce that sophomore third baseman Nate Hanson from the University of Minnesota has been named Offensive Player of the Year presented by Rawlings. This is the league’s newest award and is given to the player at each position, who had the best batting average.

Hanson, who also won the league batting title with a .363 overall batting average, finished the season hitting .365 when playing third base. His .363 batting average also set a MoonDogs single season batting average record, previously held by Mike Huggins (Baylor) with a .355 batting average in 1999, and broke the MoonDogs career doubles record with a total of 25 the last two seasons that was set from 2003-05 by Aaron Grant (UC-Riverside) with 19 doubles. In addition, this marks the seventh time Hanson has either been recognized or received an award for his outstanding play this season.

To be eligible a player needed to have enough plate appearances at a given position to qualify for a batting title. In 2007 it took at least 180 plate appearances to be listed among the leaders.

To honor their achievement the eight award winners will receive an engraved bat from Rawlings. The complete list of 2007 Northwoods League Offensive Players of the Year is below.

C – Danny Benedetti, Thunder Bay Border Cats, Irvine Valley J.C., .279
1B – Darin Run, Wisconsin Woodchucks, Creighton University, .348
2B – Joe Bonadonna, Duluth Huskies, University of Illinois, .265
SS – Adam Yeager, St. Cloud River Bats, Univesity of Cincinnati, .272
3B – Nate Hanson, Mankato MoonDogs, University of Minnesota, .365
OF – Andy Dirks, Brainerd Blue Thunder, Wichita State University, .351
OF – Tim Dellwo, Alexandria Beetles, Southern Arkansas University, .331
OF – Daniel Robertson, Green Bay Bullfrogs, Concordia University Irvine, .321