Cory takes inspiration from dad, grandpa

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This article was published 20/06/2021 (1682 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Connor Cory may have some big cleats to fill on the baseball diamond but it’s hard to beat the advantage of living with a great coach and mentor.

The 18-year-old pitcher from Wawanesa, whose father Shaun and grandfather Gene are both members of the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame, just finished his freshman year with the Mayville State Comets.

“It puts a bit of pressure on,” Cory said of his family name. “It certainly adds an aspect of pressure to perform. Growing up, everybody knows your name and ‘You’re so-and-so’s kid, he must pretty talented.’ It obviously puts a bit of pressure on my back but at the same time it gives you an outlet how you deal with this.

“You’re starting to get people who think you aren’t good enough and I can go ask my dad ‘How did you deal with this when you were in college or playing in the men’s league?’”

Shaun coached Connor as he grew up, and also attended Mayville State to play baseball in the 1980s. He also encouraged him as a youngster.

Connor has played the game almost since he was big enough to pick up a ball, but by no means did he specialize in one sport. He also played hockey, volleyball, basketball, badminton and was on the track and field team.

While he spent a lot of time on the mound growing up, he also played third base and outfield as he got older.

He was able to play with a Wawanesa minor baseball team in the early years but by the time he hit the 13-and-under level, a lack of players meant he had to join a team in Boissevain. 

In high school, he played with the Wawanesa team in 2017 and 2018 but on the combined Killarney-Wawanesa Raiders in 2019, when he earned a South Division all-star nod.

The season was cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic.

The appeal of baseball is simple.

“It really just comes down to love of the game,” Cory said. “I grew up around this game, I’ve seen so many great players play and I’ve had do much fun playing it growing up. It’s so much fun. You go out to the mound and strike people out and you’re throwing a great game and having fun and talking to the guys, you get social with everyone. 

“To me, there is nothing more fun and more satisfying.”

Cory’s ability also meant he earned extra opportunities.

He began playing AAA baseball at the 13U level, joining Oildome’s outstanding program and making the team every year until he aged out of 18U. He said the experience he gained was invaluable.

“The biggest thing I noticed from a playing standpoint is that you can’t make as many mistakes,” Cory said. “Mistakes cost you games, mistakes cost you championships. As a pitcher in town ball, you can get away with throwing a fastball down the middle of the plate. When you get to AAA, especially in the top half of those lineups, if you throw a fastball down the middle you’re watching him round the bases pretty quickly.

“The step up from town ball to AAA is immense.”

He said the Winnipeg teams are especially competitive because they are able to train year round.

Nevertheless, the farm kid played well enough that he was added to Manitoba’s entries in the Baseball Canada Cup in 2018 and 2019, travelling to Moncton, N.B., and Regina.

“That first year in Moncton was a stepping stone,” Cory said. “It got my feet wet in the water, and going into the next year in Regina it was ‘OK, now you need to make a statement.’ We had a really good team that made a good run.

“… Competing on that Manitoba team back-to-back years really set me up for success because it put me in a place where I knew where I stand compared to the rest of the province and the rest of the country.”

He will pitch with the Altona Bisons of the Manitoba Junior Baseball League if that season begins, and will also rejoin the Wawanesa Brewers of the South West Baseball League if provincial pandemic restrictions are lifted.

The six-foot-two, 180-pound, right-handed pitcher spent three seasons with the senior AA Brewers, and said the chance to play against men was helpful. 

“I had a really good catcher in Mark Plett,” Cory said of his Brewers teammate. “He’s a really good veteran and knows the game … He’s a catcher everybody loves throwing to. You get around the guys and they’ve seen everything and know how to deal with it. They don’t get rattled if the game starts going sideways, they just stick to it.”

Cory thought about college athletics when he was younger, although he wasn’t sure if it would be hockey or baseball. Baseball began to take over in the 13U level, and when the same success didn’t follow on the ice, he knew his destiny lay on the diamond.

After making the first provincial baseball team in 2018 as an underage player, he began to realize a scholarship was possible. In his second year, with the team, the coaches outlined the post-secondary possibilities to player.

“The first year really gave me the confidence to know I could play post-secondary and the second year really exposed me to the opportunities,” Cory said. 

Several American schools began to reach out after his second national tournament appearance.

Of course, it was never really a fair fight for recruiters. Unless one of the top NCAA schools contacted him, which he concedes was unlikely, Cory was always hoping to retrace his father’s footsteps down to Mayville State.

“They’re a close school, they’re a great school, head coach Scott Berry has been there 40 years and won more championships than you can count,” Cory said. “There was no doubt for me.”

He committed in late December 2019 to the Comets of the North Star Athletic Association, which is part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.

With the pandemic still in full force, he headed down to Mayville a week before classes began, around Aug. 20. The community of 1,858, which is located on the west side of Highway 29 between Grand Forks and Fargo, is a 387-kilometre drive from Boissevain. 

After passing a COVID test, he was able to start school on time.

Cory is taking a bachelor of science in fitness and wellness, with a specialization in exercise sciences. He hopes to one day work with athletes and perhaps coach.

The blend of athletics and academics he signed up for is certainly not a situation for anyone who lacks motivation.

Cory and his teammates are up by 5 or 5:30 a.m., for a one- or two-hour practice in the gym. They head to classes after that’s done, and once classes are finished around 3, the team practises again from 4 to 7 o’clock at the latest.

Then they have to hit the books.

“It’s always a challenge but what helped me was that I played a lot of sports in high school,” Cory said. “I had a lot of early practices with volleyball, basketball, baseball etc, so I got my feet wet a lot in high school. It wasn’t a culture shock, it was more about just managing everything.

“I got on campus and everything started slow with COVID, but everything picked up. It wasn’t that hard of a transition for me.”

Cory said the keys were getting his sleep, managing his schoolwork and isolating little pockets of time during the day when he could get things accomplished.

He was also coping with his first time away from home and the built-in support network that provides. He said it went OK, in part because he lived on campus in the Berg Hall dormitory.

“I was surrounded by a lot of people so it was never a lonely time,” Cory said. “There were some ball players in my dorm and some football players around me. I got to know everybody around campus pretty well.”

He said the pandemic was a concern when he got down to North Dakota, but as the numbers began to drop and restrictions were lowered, it was less of a worry.

As it turned out, it should have been.

“It came back to bite us at the end of the fall semester,” Cory said. “We actually got completely shut down to online (classes). Especially from a baseball standpoint, that really hurt us because we got shut down with no practices for the last month of the fall semester, which is really when as a team we’re trying to develop player skills and stuff like that.

“It took away an important aspect of our training and development losing that month.”

The players were eventually allowed to go home, so Cory returned to the farm until January. Happily, the spring session went better, and while players were tested, none were positive.

The Comets attended the national NAIA tournament in Kentucky — the Comets went 0-2 in Williamsburg and failed to move on — where they were tested every day for COVID. 

“Other than the fall, it didn’t really change the way things went too, too much,” Cory said. “It was certainly something lingering in the back of your head every day.”

He had a more tangible concern when it came to baseball. Part of his struggle was discovering where he belonged in the pecking order as a freshman on a roster of 45 players with six redshirts.

“Obviously coming into this year, I wasn’t too sure where I fit into college ball,” Cory said. “I wasn’t given a crazy amount of knowledge of how college plays. I kind of, through the year, worked myself into a spot on the varsity squad where I was sort of a back-end reliever, not the guy you really go to in the high level situations, but if you need a guy to come in and get you a couple of innings, then I fit there.”

He was the unfortunate beneficiary of some hard-earned wisdom when he allowed a couple of home runs on pitches that would have been fine in AAA. In 12.15 innings pitched, he allowed 11 runs on six walks and nine hits. He also struck out nine batters.

His first appearance on March 14 against Morningside was especially tough.

“It can definitely be tough on you,” Cory said. “My first outing wasn’t a very good one and it was hard for me to think after that if I’m going to get another chance on the varsity team. 

“I had a talk with my coach the day after and he said your first outing can be rough and you’re not going to take that to the bank. We’re going to give you another shot and just go out there and make the best of it.”

He said the communication was important to him, and in his next appearance he struck out the side in order in a game against Valley City State.

“You really can’t dwell on every outing that goes bad,” Cory said. “You just have to put your nose to the grindstone and say ‘Let’s go get the next guy out.’”

Cory, who throws a fastball, curveball and split-fingered changeup, said the game changes again when you get to college. It’s not just that mistakes are magnified.

There is also a focus on the other team’s roster he has never experienced before.

“You get a lot more into how the hitter hits and how the pitcher pitches,” Cory said. “In college, you get guys who are big-time changeup pitchers, you get guys who are big-time power hitters, some guys who can’t hit the high pitch and you get a lot more scouting reports on how to pitch to guys and how to hit certain pitchers. College gets a lot more in-depth on the game.”

There was one familiar face for Cory on the Comets, Jared McCorrister of Boissevain, who led the team with 43 RBI and seven home runs in 208 at-bats.

The pair played with and against each other a bit growing up, although McCorrister was closer to the age of Cory’s older brother, Jeremy.

Connor is working on the farm this summer, and getting workouts in when he can with some of his former provincial teammates. 

Now he wants more when he heads back to Mayville. He and his coach had an exit meeting to set expectations for next season and that, combined with an improving roster, has him excited to get back to school.

“Coming into this season, we want me to be a shutdown guy, a lockdown guy out of the bullpen, a guy he can come to in pretty much any situation and trust to get outs,” Cory said. “I think that’s a good goal for me coming into this season. I think I underperformed this season for my expectations — I was very up and down, with some very, very good outings and some outings that were not good — and I really learned from that.

“I think I can use that information I got from the teams we played against to really turn this next year into a breakout year.”

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