When Matt Otis dropped his daughter off for her first day of kindergarten in Littleton, Colorado, he said four words he would repeat nearly every day thereafter, words young Korbe Otis would take to heart from that day forward.
“The smartest kid wins,” he said. “That was always my saying. I understood, or I had learned in my school experience, that if you’re the smartest kid in the room, the door stays open for you longer. It doesn’t guarantee you anything, it doesn’t guarantee you success, but the door is going to stay open for you longer if you’re the smartest kid in the room. Korbe had also bought into that and was an extremely bright young lady.”
Korbe Otis has been the smartest kid, or close to it, in every room she has entered. And she has done a whole lot of winning. Three Athlete of the Year awards at Columbine High School. All-conference honors in both the ACC and SEC. Two trips to the Women’s College World Series with Florida. And most recently, the Elite 90 Award, presented to the student-athlete with the highest GPA on any of the teams at the Women’s College World Series.
And it’s not like Otis was taking a light course load, either. After transferring from Louisville to Florida following her sophomore year, she graduated this past spring with a degree in human biology and has completed multiple internships in the medical field. She plans to start medical school in the fall of 2026 — but professional softball will have to do for now.
Otis has not missed a beat as a rookie with the Blaze, starting in left field and occupying the leadoff spot. During one seven-game stretch that spanned the mid-season break, she was 10-for-18 with three doubles and two home runs, and she has maintained a perfect fielding percentage throughout her first pro season.
“There’s not been something I haven’t been able to adjust to in my career,” Otis said. “Me being a very analytical hitter, that puts me in a good spot to set up communication for the rest of the team and things like that. Just trying to do the best that I can and set the table for my team.”
“Edit my life“
Growing up a short drive south of Denver, Otis was always very competitive. Her father said she wanted to run everywhere she went and had such great balance that she never fell down. Seeing that Otis might have some natural athletic ability, her parents signed her up for nearly every sport they could, including soccer, basketball, gymnastics and golf.
Otis was also a drummer and a competitive go-kart racer. But once softball entered the picture, it was clear she had a new favorite, even asking to quit golf because her golf swing was messing with her softball swing.
“You just learn how to prioritize what’s important for you,” Otis said. “I just learned to edit my life. That was something I had gotten from Kobe Bryant and his book after the fact, but I had already started doing that. My dad always said you have to do what you need to do before you do what you want to do.”
Colorado hosts several major club softball tournaments every summer, but its climate is not conducive to year-round play, so the Otis family looked west to provide Korbe with the best possible instruction. She initially trained with a coach closer to home before quickly realizing she was good enough to play for a nationally-focused organization, which she found in Southern California, first with the Orange County Batbusters and later the Corona Angels.
That meant flying from Denver to California nearly every weekend throughout Otis’ middle and high school years — a significant financial commitment, and one that required Otis to do her homework on the plane and sacrifice a more typical teenage social life. It got to the point where Otis became just as familiar with the streets in Corona as she was with her own neighborhood in Littleton.
“We traveled to California almost every weekend for six years. That’s not cheap,” Korbe said. “I knew the investment that my family was putting in, the sacrifices they were making for me to chase my dreams. I had to uphold my end of the deal there as well, which meant giving up some things of my own to be able to practice, be able to get better.”
“She’s a perfect fit for us“
The recruiting process moved quickly for Otis, who committed to Louisville after a visit in eighth grade, before the current rules prohibiting direct contact until junior year. She remained committed after Holly Aprile replaced Sandy Pearsall as the Cardinals’ head coach, but with her desire to study engineering, she found the engineering school poorly suited for athletes, and opted to test the transfer portal after her sophomore year.
Luckily for Otis, she had become a breakout star that season, slashing .414/.502/.702 with 10 homers, seven triples, 23 stolen bases and 63 runs scored in 56 games. As soon as she entered her name into the portal, her phone was flooded with messages from almost every team in the SEC, Pac-12 and Big Ten.
Otis listened to every call, heard every pitch, kept a detailed notebook of every conversation. In the end, she chose Florida and Head Coach Tim Walton, who had a strong track record of taking very good players in the portal and making them even better.
“The one thing that really attracted me to her play was (that) she had one of the highest batting averages against top-25 opponents,” Walton said. “She’s just a unique person, high-academic kid, just so driven, so goal-oriented, that after I was about 10 minutes into the conversation, I was like, ‘We’re a perfect fit for this kid and she’s a perfect fit for us.’”
In her first season as a Gator, Otis batted .434 with a 1.271 OPS, 59 walks and just 18 strikeouts. That led to an NFCA First-Team All-American honor, and while she was not quite that good as a senior, she still helped Florida return to the WCWS and remained at the top of her game in the classroom.
“Korbe is not a talker. She’s a doer. She sets goals, she gets up really early, she takes care of her body, she works hard,” Walton said. “I saw a very mature look to not only softball, but a mature look to life, way beyond her years.”
April 19 was already a good day for Otis, whose walk-off single had delivered Florida a series win over Alabama. But it became even better when Athletes Unlimited Softball League Commissioner Kim Ng took the field after the game and presented Otis with a golden ticket, letting her know she would be drafted for the AUSL’s inaugural season this summer.
Otis’s dad was there that day, just like he was in Oklahoma City when Otis was announced as the Elite 90 Award winner before the start of the WCWS.
“That’s what I had set out to do when I was really young, to be the best athlete, to be the best student,” Otis said. “That’s the epitome of what I wanted to do. So for me to be able to do that in my last year, it just put icing on the cake.”
Comfortable on stage
Otis is used to competing in front of large crowds now, in Gainesville, Oklahoma City, and everywhere the Blaze have played this summer. She may be someone who leads by example, but stage fright has never been a problem for Otis — at age seven, she took her place on stage with the Zac Brown Band to perform their hit song “Chicken Fried.”
The concert venue in Colorado Springs was reserved for ages 18 and up, but Otis and her family had connected with the manager for the band’s fan club, who invited her on stage. Otis continued her connection with the band by raising money for Camp Southern Ground, which Brown founded to support kids with learning disabilities.
“That was really cool for me because it opened up so many avenues for me to be able to give back and do more,” Otis said. “I wanted to figure out ways that I could help others and afford others the same opportunity I was afforded to play softball, go to summer camp, do things like that.”
Otis never relinquished that go-getter attitude, and it has led her to immense success on and off the softball field. Her medical dreams will have to wait a little while, but her softball dreams have been achieved.
“As a parent, you just try to take all of your expensive experience, and you try to give it to your kids as inexpensive experience,” Matt Otis said. “[She’s an] amazing, selfless individual. She really took that inexpensive experience and molded it in her own way, in her own life, to be a very bright kid and a very successful athlete.”
Benjamin Rosenberg is the Blaze beat reporter for the AUSL this season. He has more than seven years of experience covering college, professional and high school softball, and graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 2021.
