Summer Sports Diaries: Corri Vermilya and Carter Wachtel
Four of the area's top athletes — Wooster's Blake Bowen, Norwayne's Shelby Vaughn, Loudonville's Corri Vermilya and Triway's Carter Wachtel — will be providing first-person updates during their busy summer sports schedules.
This week's updates are from Vermilya and Wachtel as they continue their quests to become next-level players in baseball and soccer. Check out part one featuring Bowen and Vaughn here.
These are the Summer Sports Diaries:
Corri Vermilya
I play AAU with the Buckeye State Blast, based around the Wayne County area. Most of my teammates are from local schools like Waynedale, Chippewa, Smithville, West Holmes, Black River, and Wadsworth.
Since the season is coming to an end from this past school year, we still play in the sophomore division at our tournaments. We've been in some smaller tournaments this season hosted locally, like Akron, Massillon, and Columbus. We've also played in some bigger exposure events, like the Clash in Cincinnati, Run for the Roses in Louisville, Kentucky and we are playing in the Finale in Cincinatti the weekend of July 23-25. We have done really well at our tournaments this season and have won a good amount of them. The most enjoyable part of every tournament for me is definitely just having the opportunity to be on the court with all of the super talented players on my team, and the chemistry we all share is so fun to play with.
This summer we played in a three-on-three league for school ball, and there were tons of great players in the league. One I really enjoyed competing with was Caitlyn Holmes from Akron Ellet. She is a super skilled player in my grade who was quick, could knock down shots, and also had really impressive moves and finishes. Getting to go up against players like that is always a great matchup.
I've really been working on using both hands and both sides of the court in my offensive game. More importantly, myself and my coaches have been challenging me to play great defense every possession on the floor. Every single one of my teammates for AAU is a baller, so having the chance to defend them at practice forces me to step up and really focus on getting stops.
In Cincinnati, there is a huge supermarket called Jungle Jim's that has almost any food from any country you can think of. It's super cool and if you get the chance to go there, you should definitely stop and look around.
Carter Wachtel
This summer has been one for the books. I recently switched travel ball teams so this has been a summer dedicated to getting to know my coaches and learning from them. I play travel ball for Georgia Impact Premier – Caymol 16U. We are based out of Atlanta, Georgia, but my teammates come from all around. They are from Georgia, New York, Virginia, Tennessee, and Florida.
As we have gotten deeper into the summer and I look back to what we have accomplished, it really amazes me. We started off the summer in Newberry, Florida where we finished top four out of 45 very skilled and elite softball teams at the PGF Show Me the Money. I was named the 16U Pitcher of The Tournament. And from there, we played in the Thunderbolts Showcase in Alabama where we were 6-0 on the weekend.
Then on to the Scenic City Top 25 in Dalton, Georgia where we won the tournament. Those were three very successful weekends for us. After that, we traveled to Colorado to play in the CO Sparkler in Aurora where we finished ninth. The past two weeks we’ve been in Atlanta. We are going to wrap up our summer next week at the PGF Nationals in Huntington Beach, California. We will be out there for nine days playing against the top players in the country.
Facing this elite competition and coming together with these girls has been making me a much better athlete. My teammates are the real deal, and it is such an honor to be able to play with them. It’s been a really good experience not only playing with my new team but seeing them play with so much emotion and grit.
In this sport, there is always room for improvement and there are always things to work on. But the summer is go time and I play with the skills and keys I have worked on during the off season. Here and there I will work on little things that need improvement, but no drastic changes unless necessary. When the summer ends, I will go back into the grind of working on mechanics. This off season, I am going to really work on increasing the speed on my pitches and dialing in on my locations.
Because of the moves I made this year, I’ve had the opportunity to play against some top-level athletes from all over the United States. I enjoy running into past teammates that have joined other national teams both from high school and travel. The friendships I have made through softball will last a lifetime.
Side note: One place that I very highly recommend to everyone back home is Publix. Not sure if it's just me, but I had never heard of one before I started playing down South. It’s actually a very common grocery store but they have everything. They always have the best cut up fruit and it's so easy to just walk in and walk out. They have different varieties of wraps and I just think it’s the best store to go to in between or after games. It has definitely become routine to get there if one is close.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Summer Sports Diaries: Corri Vermilya and Carter Wachtel
