Earlier this week we ran one of our favorite stories of the year, an article titled “Aidan Falk: A Sister’s Greatest Gift.”

In this feature, we learned how Aidan was able to be a bone marrow donor for her older sister, Emma, who was battling leukemia and how that ordeal—as painful as it was—brought the family closer together.

As the article dealt with medical issues and concerns, it didn’t feel right to focus too much on Aidan’s recruiting process, which we learn more about here with the help of her club coach, Donny Dreher of the Finesse (Mich.) program.

Coach Dreher paints an interesting picture around how he met Aidan, how she came to join his team even though she’s from Rochester, N.Y., and how this record-setting player narrowed her choice from “two dream schools” down to one…

 

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Aidan is a powerful lefthanded hitter.  I call her “Roy Hobbs” from The Natural and people in Rochester, N.Y. call her “Bryce Harper.”  She is the best first baseman I have ever had, but she also is an outstanding outfielder and catcher.

I met Aidan when I was working a Notre Dame camp.  Aidan was working in my infield stations and she stood out immediately.  I told Deanna Gumpf (Notre Dame head coach) how good she was fielding and many coaches added, “You should see her hit.”

At lunch I asked Aidan what her dream schools were and she said Notre Dame and Michigan.

I asked her if she wanted me to reach out to Hutch (Carol Hutchins, head coach at Michigan) and of course she did.  Hutch watched Aidan’s skills video on YouTube and called me two minutes later.

Hutch said, “Find out where Aidan is going to Nationals, I will be there to watch.”

Aidan’s club team did not qualify for Nationals so I picked her up on our Finesse team for the 2012 PGF Nationals in Huntington Beach, Calif.  I allowed her to go to PGF Nationals with my team so Notre Dame and Michigan could watch her play.

Both Notre Dame and Michigan loved her.

Aidan went on unofficial visits to both schools and received scholarship offers from both.  Aidan called me and said it was so hard to make a decision because she liked both schools.

I told her I did not feel sorry for her!  She had two offers from her two dream schools which are great academic institutions with great tradition, great softball programs and great coaching staffs.  Kids would die for that opportunity.

She took extra time to make her decision but finally chose Michigan.

Once other travel teams saw Aidan play, they obviously wanted her too.

She was pursued by many other travel teams, including NJ Intensity and Newtown Rock out of Pennsylvania.  I think Aidan was comfortable with me as a coach and knew we played a competitive schedule to prepare her for top level D1 college ball.

Also factoring in was that we had other players committed to Michigan (Kelsey Susalla, 2012, and Alex Sobczak, 2015). Since then we have added two more (Leah Crockett, 2015 and Haley Hoogeenraad, 2016).

I also think Aidan knows I am very familiar with Michigan softball and Michigan’s coaching staff.

I firmly believe that Aidan’s strength and size will allow her to have an immediate impact in Michigan’s lineup as a freshman.

— Donny Dreher (Finesse 18U-Dreher)