Taylor McQuillin, the 2015 pitcher from Mission Viejo, Calif., has had a great 2014—she won a high school national championship with the Diablos of Mission Viejo High, a club national championship with the OC Batbusters and the Gatorade National Player of the Year Award—and that was all as a junior.

Starting next week, Taylor will be a senior and in her latest blog talks about what she’s looking forward to in her final year before college.

The Southern Calif. native is ranked as the No. 5 rated prospect in the 2015 class and has committed to the Univ. of Arizona. She is also an outstanding student-athlete with a 4.0 GPA.

Perhaps Taylor’s greatest accomplishment is she has done all this despite having to overcome birth defects making her completely blind in the left eye and with only partial hearing on the left side.

Be sure to check out Taylor’s previous blogs and those of our other standout bloggers!

Video of Taylor receiving the Gatorade National Player of the Year

Official Gatorade National POY announcement

 *****

As I get ready to start off my senior year this up coming week, a ton of emotions have run through me.

It’s an exciting year filled with memories you will never forget. However, senior year is also the last year before you become independent and at the end of the year you end up moving on towards the next chapter and start off a whole new journey in your life.

This year is going to be bittersweet but definitely one worth remembering for me.

Being a senior, people think that all the responsibility lies with you in the sport that you play; however, I have always been told that you don’t need to be the oldest to come out and lead the team.

Yes, the older ones are the ones who usually take control because they have had more experience but it doesn’t mean that the younger ones on your team can’t be role models too. My goal, especially being a senior now, is to tell younger girls that they are capable of being a leader for someone else.

I have always watched older girls as they have gone off to graduate and do bigger and better things with their softball careers and now being a senior, I have realized that I am only a few short months away from being in that same spot.

Being where I am today, I wish to be someone that younger girls look up to and ask for help. I want to be someone where people can say “Wow, she really chose to marvel at something in her life.”

But most importantly, I want to prove to everyone that just because I am a senior, it doesn’t mean that I still won’t work just as hard to continue to better myself for the future.

Life is full of obstacles and stages, and I am in the process of entering both the final high school journey and preparing myself for the new beginnings that the following years have waiting for me.

Senior year is only a time to get stronger and have that final push before you go off to college that next fall. Everyone wants to finish out their senior year strong as an athlete and that’s what I intend to do.

— Taylor McQuillin