Johnson & Wales University Providence

Truly one of the great baseball players in the first five years of the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC), Rob Eccleston was leadership and determination personified. A diminutive 5-7, the native of New Bedford, Massachusetts fashioned a history of firsts on the diamond for Johnson & Wales. First to play over 100 career games, first to reach 100 hits and score over 100 runs in an NCAA career at JWU, “Ecc” was also one of the leaders of a 1998 team that captured the institution’s first GNAC baseball championship. In the first year of conference play (1996), Eccleston was named all-league at second base as a sophomore. In 1997, after hitting .356 with 42 hits, he was named to the GNAC First Team. One year later, he was a GNAC First Team pick  after hitting .346 with 46 hits. A brilliant fielder, Eccleston made all but 18 plays in his last 320 chances at second base over the last two years of his career.