Kenzie Carter

Player Bio and Testimonial

Hey coaches! My name is Kenzie carter, and I’m a catcher and utility player from Colby Kansas. My story is a bit unique and complicated compared to most, so let me start from the beginning. At the age of 14 days old, I made my debut for watching my first every baseball game. You might be wondering, why on earth is she at a field when she is two weeks old. Well, the answer would be my amazing dad, who is the head baseball coach at Colby community college and has been for the last 24 years now. Growing up, I was at the baseball and softball fields more than I was not, learning about the game and slowly falling in love with it. I got to fall in love with it from a different perspective than most, because instead of starting off actually playing, all I did was watch, and ask way too many questions. This then led me to want to try it out for myself, which I did, and loved. As I started to play, I realized that this is something I wanted to continue to play at a higher level at. And in order to do that, I had to figure out a way to push myself more within the sport. This then led me to try out for a team in Denver, Colorado, which as you can tell, is not super close to Colby, Kansas. A lot of changes had to be made, which started with me becoming an online student, and traveling out weekly to Denver for practices. I would in no way trade it for the world though, and have been pushed and have grown in so many areas of the game and in my life. It has truly been one of the best decisions I have made. One of the coolest things about growing up the way I did, and what makes me unique is that I got a completely different perspective on the game of softball/baseball, and what it means to people. I have spent hundreds of hours with and around players in and out of the game, and one of the biggest questions it has helped me solve is why in a game where we fail more than we succeed do we find so much joy. I have seen the college burn out, those who push themselves and practice to their breaking point, and even those on the flip side who couldn’t handle the extra work and pressure. What I have found is that there is no cookie cutter way to be successful at this sport, and that you really must be ok with exactly who you are in a certain time and moment, because you never really grow until you fail. In even better words, I have seen the best come through this program, and in the simplest way I can put it, they fail forward. No matter what happens, they are always coming in getting one percent better, even if that means they are in a slump and do not know how to get out of it, or if they don’t have the motivation to get the extra reps in. The cool thing about this sport is that there is never a point where you have nothing left to learn and work on, so you really must figure out how to have joy in the struggles. I still have so much to learn, but I have grown so much within the sport, and cannot wait to keep growing and falling in love with the game of softball!