Patarini

This is the fourth in a series of articles profiling the 2018 Knoch High School Sports Hall of Fame inductees.JEFFERSON TWP — Participation in sports was a natural part of family life for Carla Wetzel Patarini.“My dad played baseball in Butler and my mother played basketball when girls only played half-court,” the 1978 Knoch graduate said.“My brother played basketball and golf for Knoch, my sister was a cheerleader. My whole family is athletic.”Wetzel Patarini was a busy athlete, and successful enough to be included in the 2018 Knoch High School Sports Hall of Fame class. She will be inducted prior to the Knights' home football game with Highlands Friday.Wetzel Patarini was a co-captain of the Knoch volleyball team in 1976-77 and 1977-78. She lettered three years in the sport and helped lead the team to section titles her junior and senior seasons.She also lettered three years in basketball as a point guard and was a tri-captain her senior year.“Not a lot of girls played sports back then, so a lot of us did more than one sport,” Wetzel Patarini said. “We became a pretty close-knit group and were pretty successful.”While the Knoch volleyball team won consistently, the basketball team “was a young team when I started playing and we were full of enthusiasm. It was a lot of fun because we grew together as a team,” she said.“It's an incredible honor to be going into my high school's Hall of Fame. I'm joining some rare company and that's nice.”Wetzel Patarini was inducted into the Grove City College Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008. She earned a school-record 11 letters there, playing on the Wolverines' volleyball, basketball and softball teams.Her teams won a combined 195 games and seven Women's Keystone Conference championships at GCC.“I never played fastpitch softball until my sophomore year in college,” Wetzel Patarini said. “My cousin (Vicki Keasey) was coach of the Freeport High School softball team and I played summer softball for her.“I played third base for two years in college, left field for one. I loved the game. I played in local softball leagues until I was 50.”Wetzel Patarini majored in accounting in college. She worked in accounting in the construction business for 10 years before her and her husband ran a large boarding kennel for 20 years.“Grove City was a great school for academics,” she said. “And it was a smaller school, so I could play all of the different sports there.“I don't know if my dad missed even one game of all the sports I played through high school and college.”Besides playing in adult softball leagues, Wetzel Patarini played in volleyball leagues at the YMCA for a while after graduation.“I've always loved sports,” she said. “At Grove City, we had winning teams the whole time I was there.”