Nicole Marino, a speedy 2016 outfielder/utility player with the Cal Nuggets – Woods team, recently committed to UC Santa Barbara and, as is often the case, I got a nice e-mail from her father, Vince, sharing the news.

I asked how the process went and how Nicole ending up committing to the Gauchos and he forwarded a very impressive recap of her recruiting journey, which I’m running here because I think there’s some great insight into how to navigate these often confusing waters that younger players and parents came take note of!

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Nicole verbally committed to UC Santa Barbara on November 30, 2014.

UCSB is Nicole’s dream school and she has been in love with it ever since her first camp there in the summer of 2013, but her road to recruitment has been arduous.

She started playing softball at the age of five. Even back then, she was gifted with the attribute of speed. As a first year 14U playing with KG Hitters, her then coach Kiko Garcia, realizing her speed, told her to switch to the left side of the plate.

Nicole then began taking batting lessons weekly with Bill Gaito, whose daughter Camille was the standout pitcher who won the NCAA Division 2 championship in 2011 for UC San Diego.

Learning to bat from the left side and undo nine years of hitting from the right took hundreds of hours of practice. However her perseverance and desire to be the best she could be finally paid off this past Sunday night when, with a phone call, her dream of playing college softball and attending the school she fell in love with came to fruition.

At Marin Catholic High School, Nicole has been the starting varsity centerfielder and lead off hitter since freshman year. She is the “table setter.” Nicole has stolen 53 bases in her two years and led her team in hitting last year batting .481 with a two-year average of .470 and an OBP of .524.

She has been named All-League in each of her two years playing and has helped her team to the semi-finals in North Coast Section Division 4 and 2^nd place in MCAL play.

Her home-to-first time has been timed at an OnDeck Softball event at 2.61 sec which was 2^nd amongst 283 girls participating and her home-to-home time has been clocked at 10.4 sec at a college softball camp this past summer.

The recruiting process has been a lot of work but fun.

Schools from the East Coast, Midwest, and West Coast have all shown great interest in her. She has been at recruiting camps back East, in Las Vegas, as well as down in Southern California. With each camp came the opportunity to see what it was like to play at the college level and the commitment it would take.

Nicole has met girls from almost every part of the country and has also participated in three OnDeck Events.

The most helpful and influential in their advice has been her two travel ball coaches, Haley Woods who played for Cal Berkeley and is head coach and president of the Cal Nuggets organization, and Jess Mazeau, the assistant coach and recruiting coordinator.

Recruiting took hours of emails and follow ups with coaches advising them of her activities, upcoming tournaments, game times for the tournaments, and follow up emails.

And it’s important to note that without good grades, the opportunities to play in college dwindle quickly. The primary focus for Nicole, a 3.81 GPA student at Marin Catholic High School, was to study as hard as possible to earn sufficient grades so that college coaches would even look at her. Coach Woods, who was an All-American at Cal during her playing years, and every college coach that Nicole spoke to all told her the same thing: “Without good grades, the options become much more limited!”

It is certainly a time consuming process but the rewards are worth it as she can attest to. But the recruiting process not only can take a toll on the athlete, but also on the family.

Vacations are put on hold or revolve around the travel ball schedule, which also can sometimes tax the finances, but in the end, a student athlete who realizes her dreams is worth every penny of it!