For many high-achieving athletes, sports can open up the world to them as they become increasingly proficient.

For Moffat County’s Teryn Carter, the first of hopefully many moments like that happened earlier this month.

Carter recently returned to Craig after competing in the international softball tournament The Cup Jan. 17-19.

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The event included 16 teams from Europe and the United States, with Carter assigned to the team Chaos, the makeup of which included girls from Colorado, California, Tennessee, Vermont and Pensylvania, as well as one from Schiedam, Netherlands, the site of the tourney.

Carter, a Moffat County High School junior, said the majority of players were complete strangers, though none of them wasted time getting in gear.

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“We had no practices together and just jumped straight into games, she said. “The pressure was crazy, and it was a weird adjustment as to the fact that the field was not a field.”

The diamond was a rather confined indoor space — an indoor gym with a ceiling that made pop flies difficult.

Carter noted that as the second base player, she was also responsible for playing further back to handle right field.

Her team faced off against the top seed Olympia twice, losing the first 6-1. In the rematch, Chaos started making their opponents sweat.

“People from the other halls had heard we were ahead in the game and started piling into hall 1 as we were ahead 4-0 with 10 minutes left in the game,” Carter said. “In those last 10 minutes Olympia had scored five runs.”

Carter noted that there were minimal hiccups as far as connecting with players and coaches from other nations. During her time overseas, all the people she encountered were polite and helpful.

“This opportunity really showed how big the softball family truly is and that no matter who you are, how old you are, or where you are from, you’ll always have a team somewhere,” she said. “I made some long-term friendships and met really good people. This opportunity was amazing and helped prove that hard work and dedication truly does pay off.”

Carter said she and her family were looking into elite softball programs last summer when they discovered The Cup, which involved applications and interviews, and once she was officially recruited, she had to do some fundraising.

“Small-town Craig really came around for me and helped me out,” she said.

After being part of the driving force to get a softball team started for MCHS in the past year, Carter said it was quite the jump to go on to a tournament that included players who were much older, with some bound for the 2028 Olympics.

“If I can make it to the Olympic level, that would be super cool, although the intimidation just gets higher and higher the further up into the sport you get,” she said. “I don’t think anything will top being only 17 playing Olympic-level players that are in their 30s.”

MCHS coach Angela Terry noted that she expects Carter bring even more understanding of the game to the team in the coming year.

“She’s going to be a leader for us,” Terry said. “I think we can make a lot more progress and move forward even more.”

She added that Carter showed other girls how many opportunities there can be for athletes beyond the high school.

“If they go out and find it, it’s there for them. That’s what she did,” Terry said. “She moved forward, and I see great things happening for her.”

With her senior season this fall, Carter said she’s still deciding what might be the best goal within the sport post-high school. She would be interested in signing with a college program but would also be open to joining a traveling club team.

She noted that she hopes to bring a good mentality to the Bulldogs in their second year as a team this fall after playing at a high-profile event like The Cup.

“We played really well together last year with it being as new as it was, so I think this year we’ll be a lot better, as we have a year under our belts and can knock out some of the mistakes we made and since everyone now knows the fundamentals it makes it easier to jump in and work on plays,” she said. “I tend to take the game a little too seriously sometimes and there’s no point in that — if you’re not having fun, you’re not gonna play all that great. And I want my team to understand that too.”