Junior shortstop Manny Jefferson was named WCC Player of the Week on April 11 and became the first Wave to earn the honor this year. He's batting .310 with a team-high nine home runs,and we caught up with him to talk about his performance, how he stays healthy and what we can expect from the team come conference tournament time:

Q: You won conference player of the week recently. How did that feel?

A: It's a great honor. I wasn't expecting it at all. I'm just trying to do whatever I could to help the team win.

Q: What are you doing to try to keep up the numbers and keep playing the way you are?

A: I am just trying to keep doing what I've been doing: taking a lot of swings in the cage, working on specific things to try and get better. Trying to keep my swing more consistent than it has been recently.

Q: You are currently leading the team in home runs. What can you attribute this boost in power to?

A: I would say Stew Gonzales, our lifting coach. We spend a lot of time in the weight room. Stew has really been working with us, and a lot of us have gotten a lot stronger since we started in the fall. Even in the spring, we continue to get stronger,even though we aren't lifting as much as we do in the fall.

Q: Since your freshman year, you have been a mainstay at shortstop, rarely missing a game. How do you keep healthy enough to sustain such a rigorous position all the time?

A: I just try and do what I can, in the training room, to stay healthy, to prevent anything serious from happening. Obviously, there are going to be little nicks and aches, but I just try and play through that. But the major thing is to try and do what I can in the training room and keep anything from really happening.

Q: Besides the normal practices, do you work on your own either in the cages or on the field taking grounders?

A: Yes, I do. I try to hit at least six or so times a week in the cage, depending on how my swing is feeling that day. I am taking a lot of ground balls. I like taking ground balls; it kind of soothes me. I'm just trying to continuously improve every single day.

Q: The team has won the conference tournament and been to postseason play each of the last two years. How will that experience help now that the season is winding down and the WCC tournament is looming?

A: I think it will really help us. Almost everyone on the team has been there before. We kind of know what's expected, especially the pressure that has been put on us before, like when we played BYU in the conference tournament last year. We've really comeback from that, and have played at a really high level since then. Hopefully we can make it to the tournament, stay at the level we know we can play at, and see what we can do from there.