Jace Veith grew up in Deer Park, a small town between Ottawa and Oglesby.

In fifth grade, his parents divorced, which led his mom to move to Ottawa and dad to Grand Ridge. Ultimately, he went to Grand Ridge Middle School to finish out junior high years.

Veith was never a big kid; both of his parents were relatively small but that never diminished Jace’s love for sports.

He fell in love with basketball, baseball, and even football, but his size always slightly held him back when other kids kept getting bigger. With that, his parents never let him play football, so he stuck to the other sports. To counter being smaller, Veith said he started working out in seventh grade trying to be stronger and faster than everyone else.

After Jace played numerous amounts of sports, growing up, Veith ended up falling for the gym and baseball. Vieth is currently a freshman at IVCC on the Eagles baseball. But his story goes a little farther back.

When covid hit at the end of seventh grade is when Veith really fell in love with the weights, saying he had an at home gym at his dad’s where he spent most of his time during lockdown. In eighth grade, the gym started to be a safe place for Jace. When school started to stress him out, he did not have a good game, or even if a girl did not look his way, the gym was always somewhere where he could go unwind himself.

After more time in the weightroom he started to see real progress. This gave him more self-confidence and made Veith realize his size never really mattered. Going into freshman year, Jace still played baseball and basketball but started to fall out of love with basketball.

“I started to make a lot of friends and just kind of wanted to focus my skills more on baseball.”

And that he did. Veith, from a young age, always had an excellent work ethic in school or any activity that he puts his mind to. So, when it came down to focusing on baseball, it was his passion.

By junior year Jace was known as the scrappier kid who the older classmen always liked. Also, he had a good spirit around the school.
By March of that year Veith had grown a good bit: he stood around 5’10 and filled his frame out from all the years of lifting.

Jack Henson, who currently plays baseball for the ICC Cougars, was the varsity captain for Vieth’s first varsity season. Henson praised Veith’s approach to the game.

“What stood out about Jace was how hard he worked and how much energy he brought to the lineup. As the leadoff hitter he understood his role, grindings out at bats and doing whatever it took to get on base and getting the bats hot.”

Veith showed a huge jump in production for baseball and still showed his scrappiness by allegedly breaking his school record for most hit by pitches in a season.

By the time his senior year rolled around, Veith had gotten big enough for his parents to feel comfortable playing a certain sport: he then finally got to play football. Football taught Veith a lot in that one year he played.

“Football taught me to be disciplined and push past my comfort zone. It taught me hard work even though I knew it was tough work, but it was harder than I could have imagined.”

Veith after his one year of playing wishes he could have played when he was younger, but his passion and love for baseball was still his main priority. School was also never left behind for Jace; he made sure he kept up with his grades and earned honor roll throughout his four years at Ottawa.

Veith also participated in a program at Ottawa High School called Area Career Center (ACC); it was a program that helped students who wanted to do blue collar work. Veith found he liked being an electrician. “They have solid pay and I have had plenty of people tell me how a great career it can be.”

After his senior year finished baseball, Veith decided he did not want to be done playing. He decided to attend Illinois Valley Community College where he can play baseball over the next two years and get his associate degree in applied science.

As freshman year is coming to an end, Veith hopes to have a good season with the team and is looking forward to what is yet to come. Jace wants to build strong connections with the people he meets along the way knowing that he cannot take what he has available for granted. He is looking forward to graduating from IVCC and moving onto union work unless another school baseball comes knocking.

“I am Jace Veith.”