Ath­lete of the Week: Kory Goodrich

When se­nior Kory Goodrich en­tered Bethel Uni­ver­sity in the fall of 2016, he did not know if he be­longed on the team. The sup­port from his team­mates kept him grounded. 

“I would say the sup­port I’ve got­ten from my team­mates has been the biggest thing,” Goodrich said. “The con­fi­dence and then just…go­ing out there and be­ing able to do it.” 

Grow­ing up in Hunt­ing­ton, IN, Goodrich learned the game of base­ball from watch­ing it on T.V. with his dad. As he started play­ing on the field, he fully re­al­ized his love for play­ing base­ball. 

Dur­ing a high school sum­mer league, Goodrich de­vel­oped a re­la­tion­ship with As­sis­tant Coach Cameron Bra­nock. Bra­nock con­vinced him to look into the Bethel base­ball pro­gram. 

“He had a lot of good things to say about the school and the pro­gram,” Goodrich said. “We had a good re­la­tion­ship and I trusted him in that. I came here and I would­n’t change it for the world.” 

One of his team­mates and fel­low pitcher, se­nior Justin Ras­mussen said Goodrich taught him a lot about the game. In the start­ing pitcher ro­ta­tion, Goodrich typ­i­cally pitches the first game, while Ras­mussen pitches the sec­ond. 

In week­end se­ries against one team, Goodrich gets to know the op­po­nen­t’s bat­ting lineup first. Then, Goodrich gives Ras­mussen point­ers on how to at­tack cer­tain bat­ters he will face. 

Ras­mussen re­called his fa­vorite mem­ory of Goodrich in a Spring Ar­bor Uni­ver­sity game last spring. In an April 23 game, Goodrich pitched a com­plete game win over SAU, 5-1. Ac­cord­ing to the Bethel ath­let­ics web­site, he threw 153 pitches and struck out seven bat­ters. 

“We all knew his pitch count was get­ting up there,” Ras­mussen said. “It was like, ‘Holy cow, he is not com­ing out of this game.’ He just knew, ‘No, this is mine. I’m not giv­ing up.’”  

Goodrich de­scribed him­self as some­one who wears his emo­tions on his sleeve. In mo­ments of suc­cess, he is not afraid to show­case his joy.  

But Goodrich said he gets emo­tional when he makes mis­takes as well. In his first loss this sea­son to Mid­way Uni­ver­sity, he gave up eight earned runs in just over three in­nings. One mis­take snow­balled into sev­eral other mis­takes made by Goodrich and his team­mates. 

“This last week­end I had a re­ally bad out­ing,” Goodrich said. “But as long as I can give our team a chance to win, I think that’s the biggest thing.” 

De­spite the loss to Mid­way, Goodrich holds a 5-1 record on the mound this sea­son so far. Go­ing into the Cen­tral Florida In­vi­ta­tional this week­end, Bethel holds a 13-4 sea­son record. 

Goodrich at­trib­uted the team’s suc­cess to a more ex­pe­ri­enced and con­fi­dent ros­ter. 

“I think it can’t be over­looked that we have a lot of up­per­class­men,” Goodrich said. “We have a group that’s been around each other for a while and…I know no mat­ter what I do, whether it’s right or wrong, I’ve got 25 guys that have my back and I know they feel the same.” 

Through­out the emo­tional roller­coaster of the sea­son, Ras­mussen said Goodrich en­cour­ages his team­mates. When Ras­mussen is hav­ing a bad game, Goodrich re­minds him to keep his head up. 

“I would say we’ve both worked our butts off since get­ting here in or­der to help our team win,” Ras­mussen said. “That kind of thing sticks with you.”