One of the top prep baseball players in Kansas is staying home.<\/p>\n
Manhattan High rising junior Asher Newton announced his commitment to Kansas State baseball, sharing the news Thursday on social media with the caption, “Staying Home. Go Cats!”<\/p>\n
Newton, a 6-foot, 180-pound shortstop in the Class of 2028, recently represented Team Kansas at the 2026 Prep Baseball Future Games before announcing his commitment to the Wildcats.<\/p>\n
The commitment comes after a standout sophomore season in which Newton helped lead Manhattan to a 21-5 record, a Class 6A regional championship and the program’s second consecutive state tournament appearance. The Indians’ season ended in the state quarterfinals against eventual 6A champion Washburn Rural.<\/p>\n
Newton earned first-team All-Centennial League and second-team Kansas Association of Baseball Coaches All-State honors after producing one of the top offensive seasons in the league.<\/p>\n
Batting out of the leadoff spot, Newton hit .390 with a .519 on-base percentage and a 1.190 OPS. He led the Indians in triples (six), home runs (two), RBI (28), runs scored (28) and stolen bases (16).<\/p>\n
The commitment continues a family tradition of baseball beyond Manhattan High. Older brother Sawyer, a first-team All-Centennial League selection this spring, will continue his baseball career at Cloud County Community College in Concordia.<\/p>\n
Newton also remains one of Manhattan’s top multi-sport athletes. He is expected to be one of the Indians’ few returning players with varsity experience on the basketball court after Manhattan graduated a core of four seniors, including Sawyer. As a sophomore, Newton averaged 2.3 points and 1.5 rebounds per game off the bench, highlighted by a career-high 10-point performance.<\/p>\n
He also becomes the latest former or current Manhattan High standout with ties to the K-State program. Earlier this year, former Indian Kyler Horsman transferred to K-State after beginning his collegiate career at Barton Community College.<\/p>\n
Horsman starred for Manhattan in 2023 before spending time at Barton, where he set the program record with 18 home runs in a single season this spring, earning Barton’s Male Athlete of the Year honors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Newton still has two seasons remaining with the Indians. He can officially sign with K-State in November of 2027, having made a verbal commitment to the Wildcats in the meantime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the top prep baseball players in Kansas is staying home. Manhattan High rising junior Asher Newton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[119082,993,448,2149,996,56921,997,56922,75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-315669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-barton-community-college","tag-baseball","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-kansas","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","tag-major-league-baseball-teams","tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}