DePauw Stories

During the first inning of one of his last collegiate baseball games, Carter Knoll ’25 took a moment to pause and let it all sink in. 

“I looked down the long dugout and saw everybody cheering for the next batter,” he recalls. “I tried to take a mental picture of that. I was seeing a group of guys who all came from different backgrounds, but who all became best friends through everything we had experienced together.”

For Knoll, that brotherhood is precisely what drew him to DePauw. After spending his first year of collegiate baseball at another university, he was ready for a new environment where he could more meaningfully connect with others and find a deeper sense of belonging.

“The biggest thing for me is community,” said the kinesiology major from Plainfield, Ind. “I'm a big people person, and when I visited DePauw, I just felt like people wanted to talk. There were so many opportunities on campus for community, and that really drew me in.”

Looking back on his time as a Tiger, Knoll cherishes the full range of experiences he’s shared with his teammates: the long bus rides, the hard practices and of course the first-inning home run he hit as a senior against rival Wabash. As he looks toward the future and prepares for a career in nursing, he recognizes that his athletic journey has been an instructive one.

“There's a lot of ups and downs in baseball, but I feel like it gave me so many life lessons,” he says. “You're not going to stay at the top the whole year, and you're not going to stay at the bottom the whole year.” 

Knoll has learned to anchor himself to sources of stability, such as faith and a commitment to serving others. That’s why he found outlets to get involved off the baseball field, taking on a leadership role in Fellowship of Christian Athletes, serving on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and leveraging his academic expertise as a STEM guide for anatomy and physiology. 

Through it all, Knoll enjoyed a front-row seat to what makes DePauw so unique – and what he saw so beautifully displayed when he looked across that dugout at all his teammates.

“This place is built on relationships. The guys I live with have become my best friends, the people in my classes have become my best friends. I want to shape my life around the people I’ve met here.”