South Range catcher Trey Pancake III was named a recipient of the Johnny Bench Award, given to the top catcher in Ohio each season. The awards also are given to high school catchers in West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky.

CINCINNATI — South Range catcher Trey Pancake III has plenty of accolades to his name, and tonight at Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park, he’ll get to add one more.

Pancake was one of 10 recipients of this year’s Johnny Bench Awards, given to the top catchers in NCAA baseball and softball, as well as the top high school baseball and softball catchers from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia.

An awards luncheon will be held, and then prior to tonight’s Reds game against the visiting New York Mets, Pancake and the other nine high school recipients will be honored in a pregame ceremony.

“I found out through Twitter. I saw a bunch of tweets about it. I didn’t know it was a thing until I saw my name and read through it,” Pancake said. “It’s a huge honor to be named to something like that after someone who played in the majors so long and basically is a legend.”

Bench played all 16 seasons (1967-1983) of his Major League career with the Reds. In that span, he led the Reds to a pair of World Series titles, was named an All-Star 14 times and was also the National League MVP twice. Bench was inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989.

Pancake is making the trip to the Queen City with his parents, and says he’s looking forward to meeting the other catchers in attendance and getting announced in front of the Reds faithful. He added that he was surprised to receive the award.

“A bunch of other people had me fourth or fifth in the state (among catchers),” Pancake said. “It’s good to know that people went out and watched everybody play and showed me as No. 1.”

South Range coach Jim Hanek certainly speaks highly of his former player.

“On and off the field, he’s just a great kid,” Hanek said. “There’s the student part, which he’s great at, and then there’s the athlete part. Athletically, he brought great leadership for our team, supplied us with some offensive firepower and did a great job defensively for us.”

Hanek also highlighted Pancake’s consistency.

“He hit in the 3-hole for us, and was consistent all year. Sometimes you get ups and downs in a season, but he was one of the mainstays of our production,” Hanek noted.

As a senior for the Raiders this past season, Pancake led his team in several offensive categories. He batted .560 with four home runs, 54 RBIs and he also scored 44 runs.

“He’s also a great student of the game. He’s very instinctive, especially on the basepaths,” Hanek said. “He’s one of the best baserunners I’ve ever coached. You could tell him, ‘Hey, we need you to steal a base,’ and he can figure out when to get a jump, when to go in a count, those kinds of things. Most high school baseball players don’t have that ability.”

Those are abilities that Pancake will be taking with him to Columbus in the coming years, as the recent South Range graduate is heading to Ohio State to continue his baseball career. Pancake committed to the Buckeyes as a sophomore, and was recruited as both a catcher and outfielder.

He’s been in Columbus since mid-June, and fall classes begin in mid-August.

“My sophomore year was when (my recruiting) took off, which is also the first year I started catching,” Pancake said. “I was getting looks by Miami (Ohio), the University of Ohio, Kent State and Youngstown State.”

He added, “Ohio State was somewhere I wanted to go. My family is all Ohio State fans. So Ohio State offered me, and the coaching staff is awesome. They’re great guys, the facilities are top notch and it’s somewhere I wanted to be.”

Pancake said he toured Ohio State’s campus his freshman year, and enjoyed the visit.

“It was beautiful, and it’s a great academic school. I was thinking about more than athletics. If baseball doesn’t work out, I’ll always have the education from Ohio State to help me out later on,” he said.

As of now, Pancake says there are a few other catchers on the roster and some upperclassmen roaming the outfield. As such, he says he’s going to play wherever head coach Greg Beals needs him.

In the meantime, Pancake can keep his baseball career going with the hopes of making it even further down the road.

“In high school, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I started to get these (scholarship) looks, and I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do it,'” he said. “Now, I’m at a Division I program, and I want to go as far as I can. In three or four years, maybe I can get drafted, get on the radar and take it to the next level after.”