GONE TO THE BEACH

Thorndale High School junior Natalie Garcia never planned on playing college softball. Ending up with a Division I scholarship to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi? Definitely not planned either.

“I never had the goal of going to college (for softball),” Garcia said laughing. “I would always go to camps and they’d be like ‘raise your hand if you want to play college softball’ and I’d be the odd person out like ‘ah, I don’t really know’.”

“And that’s how funny the journey is because I never thought of myself playing (collegiately).”

She started playing in coach pitch as an eight-year-old, but only started playing select around two years ago.

“I always thought of it as fun and I enjoyed my friends who I played with,” she said. “But I did want to get better and enhance my skills.”

“So that’s when I joined Centex Buzz out of Waco.”

From there, Garcia improved playing tournaments on the weekends while starting at shortstop for the Lady Dogs.

However, she still never really considered going to the next level. That was until then A&M-CC coach Kristen Zaleski saw her playing with the Buzz in Plano. Zaleski chatted with her after seeing her play two games. The two stayed in touch after Plano, and Garcia was invited south for their summer camp. While there, she was invited back to Corpus for an unofficial visit, which ended on a high note.

“I was offered a scholarship,” Garcia said. “But I told her I would think about it, because there was going to be a head coaching change.”

“I just wanted to take my time to get my ducks in a row and also meet the new coach. When I went to their fall camp, I got to know the new coach (Kathleen Rodriguez) and fell in love with the campus, it’s so close to the beach.”

Although Garcia is a skilled defensive player with a lot of speed, she also has a reputation for being a leader on the field. She's known to lift her teammates up when they strike out and to put the rest of the infield at ease as the hitting team gains momentum.

“To me, it wasn’t my talent that Corpus really liked, it was being an encouraging, energetic player,” she said. “My coach once had a tweet that (basically) said that coaches don’t look for talent, they look for a player’s personality.”

Since announcing her commitment to the Southland Conference squad via Twitter last week, Garcia said she has loved all the congratulations she has received from many different people.

“It’s so welcoming and heartwarming and I’m just totally grateful,” she said.

The THS junior also stated that she is thankful for her family, who have sacrificed a lot of time and money to help her get to where she is. She also thanked her community for how much they care.

“The town of Thorndale is so supportive,” she said. “It’s so awesome, you see at football games, we’re all there, you see at volleyball games, we’re all there.”

“The community is so awesome at encouraging student athletes. They’ll support you no matter what.”

Garcia is the fifth current Lady Dog softball player to be signed or committed to a college softball program. The other four are Emilee Baker, Kelsey Kovar, Reagyn Trahan and Raeghan Carlson.