For Thorndale High School junior Raeghan Carlson, softball isn’t just a seasonal sport she moves on to when volleyball ends, it’s a part of her life all year around and has been for as long as she can remember.
“I started playing in T-ball when I was about four years old and moving forward, I just kind of played in the rec leagues around Thorndale,” Carlson said.
But that all changed at age eight when she was offered a tryout with the Texas Blaze, a select softball club that has some of the nation’s top softball prospects.
“I had an opportunity to try out for the Blaze team, I made the team and that was kind of the start of it,” she said. “Since then, I’ve been in hitting lessons and practices almost every week.”
Joining the Blaze, hitting coach J.B. Slimp immediately saw a future for Carlson in softball.
“He saw a lot of potential in me and would tell me about the opportunities I had and, at the time, the 18-and-under Blaze team was filled with Division I recruits,” she said. “He introduced me to that kind of environment and that’s when I was like ‘holy cow, I have an opportunity here,’ and I was pretty young still. When I was older it obviously got more crazy.”
As time passed on and beginning her prep career at THS, Carlson broke the Lady Dog home run record during a COVID-shortened freshman season with six bombs and hit 17 this past spring.
During the summer, Carlson hit the road, attending softball camps at LSU, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Sam Houston State, Mississippi State and Arkansas but when Sept. 1 came, the date the THS junior was officially allowed to communicate with college coaches, she began the recruiting process.
While thinking about the days to come, Carlson was informed by one of her coaches with the Blaze that the University of North Carolina was interested in her.
“My recruitment with North Carolina was specifically kind of crazy,” she said. “I had no idea whatsoever that they were interested.
“I’d never communicated with them before, never went to any of their camps and the only time I’d ever seen their coach was when I was in Colorado playing against one of their pitchers.”
Carlson then started communicating with them at midnight on Sept. 1 and visited the Chapel Hill campus during the first weekend of October, where everything felt right for her.
“Once I got down there, I just kind of knew,” she said. “I went on a Purdue visit before that and really enjoyed Purdue, but once I got into Chapel Hill and I kind of realized the culture was amazing, with the academics, athletics and everything just came together.”
Carlson is the daughter of Nikki and Travis Carlson of Thorndale and joins Class 0f 2021 grad Michael Herzog (Duke) as the second THS student to join an ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) school.
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