“Growing up … there was a big drive in me wanting to be better in baseball because I wanted to play at home.”
Saskatoon reliever Carter Kopp realized a lifelong dream by suiting up for his Saskatoon Berries this season.
As soon as it was announced in 2023 that Saskatoon would get a new Western Canadian Baseball League franchise, he wasted no time contacting the team.
“Right when I saw the team got announced I jumped it immediately,” said Kopp, who relished the idea of playing at home in front of his close-knit family and friends.
“I sent a text to Berries head coach Joe Carnahan. It was late August of last year, very early on. I was just eager and waiting. I explained myself, sent him a few videos and he gave me a call the next day. He said ‘We’ll take you.’ I was really pumped. I ran upstairs and told my parents, ‘I get to play at home!’ It was a great feeling. It means so much.”
Kopp grew up in his early youth watching the Yellow Jackets, the previous Saskatoon-based WCBL franchise, but they last played in 2014. Saskatoon went without a team in the league until the Berries came along.
“I’d come to Yellow Jackets games and be one of the few kids chasing around foul balls,” said the now 21-year-old. “Now I get to see all the kids chasing around foul balls and they’re asking me for autographs. That’s a great feeling.
“Growing up I was always thinking that’s where I wanted to play. There was a big drive in me wanting to be better in baseball because I wanted to play at home.”
His style of pitching could best be described as finesse.
“I can pinpoint my spots better than average,” said Kopp, who recently finished his third year as a right-handed reliever for the St. Xavier University Cougars in Chicago.
“I like to be in the zone or painting my spots. I’m not really blowing people away with my fastball. I’m trying to get my offspeed and (fastball) to work together and get some swings and misses off of that. If you can hit your spots pretty effectively then it will work a lot of the time.”
His first outing at NexGen Patch at Cairns Field for the Berries was a memorable one.
“The first time I got to throw at home, it was a big situation,” Kopp said. He earned the win in a 5-4 nail biter over the Moose Jaw Millar Express on June 9.
“I went 4.2 innings into the 11th and shut them down.”
The Berries have relied on Kopp out of the bullpen more as the season has progressed. Over an eight-game stretch in June and early July, he allowed only one earned run and 11 hits over 16.1 innings.
“Every time he gets the ball he goes out and competes,” said Carnahan, in his 13th year of WCBL coaching. “He’s had a lot of appearances this year and he’s consistent. He comes in and throws strikes on multiple pitches and he’s been able to get a lot of outs for us.”
Kopp has previous experience in the WCBL pitching for the Fort McMurray Giants in 2022. In college play, he redshirted his rookie season with St. Xavier. He only pitched twice in his second year and three times this past season for the Cougars, but hopes to parlay his time with the Berries into more playing time next year.
“I told my St. Xavier coach I was going here to the Berries and he knows that this league is a really strong league,” said Kopp, who won a conference championship with the Cougars two years ago.
“Lots of the competition I’ll face here is better than I’d see at school in a normal game. I told him before I left that I was going to prove myself this summer. And I think it’s gone pretty well so far. I’m looking for a bigger role and a strong role out of the pen like I have here.”
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