The Lake Oconee Wild Things 2025 roster featured collegiate baseball athletes from numerous universities across the state and country.
Several of the participating athletes traveled far to spend their summer in Lake Oconee and stayed with host families for their season.
For Luke Petruzzi, a 21-year-old pitcher for Rollins College in Florida, joining the roster meant spending a summer across the country. Before the season, the New York native had never visited Georgia, other than to drive to college.
“Ever since I was a kid, I always told myself that I wanted to be a plane ride away when going off to college,” Petruzzi said. “I just wanted to go somewhere south and get away from all the snow.”
Shortly before the season, Petruzzi got a call from Wild Things owner Corey Schachter, offering him a spot on the roster. He initially found the opportunity hard to believe and was eager to “see something new” for the summer.
“He [Schachter] kind of gave me this whole spiel about, you could live on the lake with a host family and play baseball,” Petruzzi said. “I was like, there has to be some downside to this, and then there really wasn’t once I got up here.”
Petruzzi noted that he decided to research Lake Oconee and then realized it would be “a great place to spend the summer.”
When he wasn’t playing baseball, Petruzzi worked a part-time position at the Reynolds’ Great Waters Golf Course. He believes the job was fitting because he was looking for a good golf course to play on, and wanted to get “a little money in his pocket”.
“The big thing was, I was looking at all these courses and trying to get on, then I was like, what if I worked here?” Petruzzi said. “Signing up, getting the job, playing some free golf around Reynolds was great, and my boss was awesome.”
Petruzzi had a busy baseball schedule, with four games a week, traveling for road games in Atlanta twice a week. Regardless, he managed to find time for the lake and the pool, where he spent time with his host family.
“I would get back from work, go out, and lie by the pool with them or at the lake,” Petruzzi said. “I just spent my time out in the sun pretty much all day, every day.”
With the opportunity to participate in the Wild Things program this summer, Petruzzi believes he has made extensive development as an athlete. He believes his pitching improved over the past few months, along with his leadership abilities.
“I would say that this summer helped me grow not just as a player but also as a leader,” Petruzzi said. “A lot of these kids [on the team] hadn’t even been to college yet, and they’re asking me how it is, and I just kind of told them that academics come first, but figure out who you are, be yourself, and give everything 110 percent.”
Overall, Petruzzi enjoyed the sense of community at Lake Oconee, which reminds him of the small town where he grew up in New York. He believes he has made many great connections and close friends on and off the team.
“I will stay in contact with the players as well as my host family and some of the other families that I met,” Petruzzi said. “I met with a lot of good connections as far as finding jobs and just growing up.”
Petruzzi is returning to Rollins College in August, where he will begin his senior year and fourth season of eligibility. He looks forward to bringing his summer experience with him and recommended the program to multiple of his Florida teammates.
“As of right now, some things that I look to bring back are a lot of what I learned, mostly on and off the field,” Petruzzi said. “I’m not only going to have visible improvement, but also ideas of how to engage and get more people to even our [college] baseball games, because I helped a lot with that [over the summer].”