This past September, senior Evan Carrier committed to play baseball collegiately at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Carrier will be joining an NCAA tournament caliber program that finished last season with a record of 29-16 overall and 14-7 in Division III conference MAC Freedom play. 

Carrier has set high expectations for his baseball career from the moment he arrived at Enloe. As an underclassman on varsity, he was immediately forced to acclimate to a higher level of baseball against older competition, as well as navigating the task of becoming part of a team with people he mainly didn’t know. Reflecting on this transition, Carrier mentions the size difference compared to middle school: “Everything is much bigger, the kids seem huge, and it is very intimidating. In middle school you get used to being ‘the guy,’ but when you move to high school that is flipped on your head and I really needed to accept that.”

While high school helped him to mature as an athlete, a big part of Carrier’s development was his club baseball career. Club baseball provides an additional opportunity for athletes looking to play in college to get exposure in front of college coaches from different areas. Meeting Kristpas Aldins, Head Coach at Stevens, was the result of this opportunity: “There is a showcase for high academic kids and colleges called ‘Showball.’ I actually went all the way to Long Island for it. Coach Aldins texted me after and told me he was impressed with my showcase, [and] things just went from there.”

As for his future goals, Carrier prioritizes success on and off the field: “At Stevens, I obviously want to play/start, but I also still want to do good in the classroom.” At a school with a great baseball program and rigorous academics, Carrier is set up to pursue as many options as he would like to in his post collegiate career. As he puts it, the dream is to make it on the big stage, but “only time will tell.”