NC State commit Chance Mako and his simple love of pitching
GRANITE QUARRY, N.C. (BVM) — Chance Mako has always been ahead of the curve in terms of his baseball timeline. At age 6, Mako was already on the travel ball circuit. At age 11, his team would go all the way to regionals and win. But unfortunately, his team was too young to compete in the Little League World Series. But this is where he found his love with America’s pastime.
“Just going on tournaments and having fun with your best friends,” Mako said. “You get to know them real well playing the game with them.”
Now a high school junior, Mako stands at 6-foot-5, 180 pounds, scraping the mid-90s with his fastball for East Rowan High School. When he’s not on the bump, he typically controls the hot corner and is a power bat for the Mustangs.
Mako is a North Carolina State commit and is the No. 59 prospect for the 2023 MLB Draft according to Prospects Live.
While Mako is more coveted for his arm, he did not pitch consistently until his eighth-grade year. But once he got out there, there was no turning back.
“I just fell in love with it,” Mako said. “As soon as I started pitching, it just felt different.”
After that season, Mako tried out for the South Charlotte Panthers, one of his area’s top travel ball teams. With a 20-pitch bullpen, Mako not only impressed the Panthers’ staff but college coaches as well.
Later that night, he received a call from his high school coach wanting to go ahead and put together a list of his top schools. For Mako, it was North Carolina, South Carolina and NC State.
“I got back home that day and I started noticing that I was seeing videos of me pitching online,” Mako said. “I was like, ‘I really don’t know what’s going on here.’”
A month later, Mako pitched an inning at a camp in Raleigh at the NC State campus and received his first collegiate offer. Before even playing at the high school level, Mako already had an opportunity to play in college.
He would take his time throughout the recruiting process, eventually committing to the Wolfpack prior to his sophomore year.
“One of my main keys to committing was making sure I’d feel like family for the four years that I’m gonna be there,” Mako said. “When they went to Omaha last year, just seeing them play, really gave me an idea of what I was gonna be playing with.”
Being given the opportunity of furthering your education at that young age is not something that Mako takes for granted, as he considers it one of his biggest accomplishments to date.
“Just making my family happy by working hard,” Mako said. “It made me feel good that I had an option to help them out as well.”
With every high school baseball player’s biggest goal being to make it to the majors, Mako takes more of a simple approach. The same approach that made him fall in love with baseball in the first place.
“I just want to keep playing the game,” Mako said. “I really just want to have fun.”
