By CHRISTOPHER 

TREMBLAY, 

Staff Writer

With his high school baseball career coming to an end, Millbury’s Cam Ayotte is getting ready to head onto his next adventure—collegiate football. Although football is his passion and now future endeavor, the Woolies senior will always hold a spot in his heart for baseball. 

“I’ve played baseball my entire life, but once I got into high school my focus changed more toward football,” Ayotte said. “The atmosphere within football is much different than baseball and I take a lot more pride in my game on the football field.”

 

Ayotte will be heading to Worcester State to compete for the quarterback position for the Division 3 Lancers and is hoping to be competitive when the fall rolls around. The now graduated Woolie was a three-sport star for Millbury and a four-time captain (twice for football and once each for baseball and basketball) during his high school career. 

“To be named a captain was a big honor,” he said. “To be able to represent all the younger kids on the teams [by] leading by example on the field as well as in locker room and in the community.”

When he crossed the lines and stepped onto the baseball field Ayotte for the majority of his playing time was a catcher and like the quarter back on the football field, he is the leader on the diamond. 

“I began playing catcher because no one else wanted to and I figured that I’d try it out to help the team,” he said. “The first time that I actually played the position for my AAU team it was really hot and after the game I was not thrilled with it and didn’t plan on doing it again.”

Following his miserable start with the position Ayotte reconsidered and took control of a bad situation and turned it into a positive one. During his freshman year with Millbury, he suited up behind the plate for the junior varsity team to open the season but come the end of the season he was sitting on the varsity bench. 

“Going into the tryouts I was very confident in my ability to play the game and that I would be on the varsity squad at one point,” Ayotte said. “I knew that I could play at that level and when I was brought up, I was thrilled. I remember my first varsity hit was at Southbridge High School; it was a squib shot to shortstop that I beat out. A hit is a hit and that’s all that’s recorded in the books.”

After finally making it up to the varsity team Ayotte was all excited and ready for the following season. His goal was to once again be on the varsity team and be in the starting lineup every game, but unfortunately, he and his teammates didn’t have the opportunity to take to the field that season due to Covid. 

  “It was very disappointing especially as it would have been my first full varsity season and I was supposed to start and it was taken away even after all the hard work that I did to get ready for the season,” Ayotte said 

  Baseball was originally halted right after the basketball season and the then sophomore decided to take a few weeks off to rest his body for the eventual return to the diamond. Eventually the Covid pandemic became much worse, and the season was postponed. 

Things got a little better during his junior campaign. Football was moved to the Fall II season, which went from late February to late April and once that finished up the spring seasons would get under way (early May to June), but it would be an abbreviated season.

During the shortened season Ayotte managed to bat .372 and led the team with 16 hits and added 8 RBI. The abbreviated season got Ayotte hungering for more playing time on the baseball field. He wanted to go into his senior year and put together a solid season.

  According to Ayotte, he wanted to hit over .400 during his final season with Millbury. He worked hard in the weight room and when the season came to an end early this year, he found himself with a .411 batting average with 30 hits and was named to the Central Mass Super Team, a group of 12 baseball players throughout the area in all the divisions.

“Cam is a phenomenal athlete with a great leadership capability,” Millbury Coach Ron Silvestri said. “Being named to the CMass Super Team is a tremendous honor for a kid who comes from such a small school (Division 4) as they tend to pick athletes form the larger schools.”

The Millbury catcher was thrilled at the honor bestowed upon him.

“It is a big honor as I take a lot of pride playing baseball,” he said. “I worked really hard with my dad and to see that everything I did eventually paid off and was noticed as a serious baseball player was nice.”

Last spring the Woolies went 8-5 in the abbreviated season but fell to Uxbridge in the first round of the tournament. This spring Millbury improved to 12-8 and was awarded the number 16 seed in the Division 4 State Tournament, but once again lost in the first round, this time 5-3 to Blackstone Valley.

“It wasn’t the most successful season in terms of wins and losses as we would have liked,” Ayotte said. “But it was a fun season, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

With baseball now in the rear mirror for now, it’s time for Ayotte to put all his energy into his football playing days, in hopes of grabbing that starting quarterback position with the Lancers.

“He has a very strong arm and would have made a good baseball prospect at Worcester State,” Silvestri said. “He loves football more and it is very hard to do both sports in college especially if the football team has spring practices.”

Ayotte knows that it is all football but has not given up on the idea of baseball in the future.

“Football will be my main focus in college, but there is always the possibility of playing baseball again,” he said. “I believe in my ability and had I not been playing football I would have definitely been playing baseball in college somewhere.”

Coach Silvestri concluded that Ayotte is a rare individual and one of the better athletes that he has coached, and there have been over 1,000 athletes that have crossed the coach’s path.