Playing on the road

Being involved in athletics has its benefits.
It teaches teamwork, putting the good of the whole in front of ones individual interests.
It can show people how to deal with both joy and disappointment.
And athletics can open doors to college for those who otherwise not have higher education in their future.
For three Jay County High School graduates this year, athletics created an opportunities for international travel they never thought they would have.
Josh Ludy, a 2008 JCHS graduate, spent a week in Cuba on a mission trip with his Baylor University baseball team. Tyler Rigby (2006) went to Italy for 10 days with American International Sports Tours’ men’s basketball team.
And Mitch Waters (2002) spent most of the spring and summer in Italy playing for the Sala Baganza Baseball Club.
“I didn’t think I’d ever have the chance to go somewhere I’ve always wanted to go,” said Rigby of his trip to Italy. “To play basketball too was something I wasn’t expecting at all.”
Waters has had a wide-ranging athletic career since graduating from JCHS.
He played baseball for two years at Ancilla College, and then baseball and basketball at Manchester College. He was one of the nation’s leaders in saves in Division III as a senior at Machester.
Since graduating, he has pitched for the Portland Rockets and other amateur baseball teams, and also played semi-pro basketball for the Indiana Steamrollers. He’s even had short stints with independent minor league teams — the Kalamazoo Kings and Chillecothe Paints — and it was the first of those experiences that led to his trip to Europe.
One of Waters’ teammates from the Kings, Justin Cicatello, pitched in Italy in 2009. And when the team he played for was looking for another pitcher this year, he suggested Waters.
The 26-year-old jumped at the opportunity, leaving for Sala Baganza, located in northern Italy, in late March and staying overseas until returning home to pitch for the Rockets in the World Baseball Congress tournament in late July.
Waters, who finished fourth in Italy’s Serie A2 in opposing batting average (.201) and fifth in ERA (1.91), spent three days a week practicing, and games were generally played on Saturdays and Sundays. The rest of his time was his own, and when he wasn’t working out, he spent it traveling. He took trains to visit different cities, spending quite a bit of time in Milan, taking in as much as he could.
“Rome is definitely No. 1 thing that stood out,” he said. “It felt like an amusement park really. Every time you turned around, there was something … you couldn’t believe. That was definitely the highlight of the trip.
“It was neat to experience stuff I’d never thought I’d experience … that I had read about in history books.”
Rigby, who was a leader on Jay County’s state runner-up team in 2006 and is IU-East’s all-time scoring leader, joined Red Wolves teammate Jacobe Edmondson and players from other colleges on the AIST squad.
 He agreed that the Rome area was the highlight of his trip to Italy in terms of site seeing. More specifically, he found St. Peter’s Basilica especially impressive.
“I don’t even know how to explain it,” said Rigby, who also said he enjoyed the Coliseum. “It was so big and so detailed.
“It was incredible because everything there was so old and yet everything looks so new”
On the court, Rigby’s team finished undefeated in its four games against Italian club teams.
Ludy, a junior catcher who hit .322 for Baylor last season, and his teammates led clinics for local youth during their January trip to Havana, Cuba. They also played some pick-up games, but core of their work came in the last several days of their trip when they helped refurbish a sports complex.
They put up basketball hoops, painted, and re-did the baseball field.
“Just getting to work on the stadium and do that kind of stuff was probably the most interesting because we got to be around the people for a whole day,” said Ludy. “They really weren’t that much different. They all love baseball, so we all had something definitely in common.”
Ludy said what most stood out was the lack of material wealth in Cuba. He said the cities are crowded, the homes are small, and the cars are mostly from the mid-20th century. And at night, the lights are turned off to conserve energy.
But the people, he learned, are no different
For example, he and his teammates attended a worship service and concert on one night of their stay. As part of it, the locals sang the song “How Great is Our God” in Spanish. Ludy and is teammates joined in, singing the song in English.
“I think just being down there, expecting it to be so much different, but then realizing they (are just like us) stood out,” he said. “It was a pretty life-changing experience.”
While similarity stood out for Ludy, both Waters and Rigby noticed a major difference when interacting with the Italian people.
“It’s a whole different culture,” said Rigby. “I thought that was one of the coolest parts. It was a lot more different than I thought it would be. The people seem really nice. Everybody wanted to talk to you. They were really friendly.”
“They’re just a lot more family oriented,” said Waters. “Everything they do is a sit-down meal. They talk a lot. … It’s not as fast-paced.”
All three said they are looking forward to the chance to travel internationally again.
Ludy, who got a treat on the way home from Cuba when he and his teammates met his idol, New York Yankees catch Jorge Posada, in the Miami airport, may get to go back to Cuba. He said Baylor, a Baptist university in Waco, Texas, is considering a return mission trip for the baseball team in 2012, which would be his senior year.
Rigby said now that he’s been to Italy, Australia is probably next on his list of destinations.
Waters already has his next excursion planned.
He will return to Italy for the 2011 baseball season, unless he succeeds in getting picked up by an MLB-affiliated minor-league squad first. He said he plans to visit London and Paris while he’s in Europe, and would also like to go to Ireland and Germany. And he’s explored the possibility of playing winter baseball in Australia, Cuba or Venezuela.
“If it wasn’t for me playing baseball, there is no chance that I would have ever experienced it,” said Waters. “I would have never traveled overseas. I would have never had the ambition. But now that I have, I want to as much as I can.”[[In-content Ad]]