Good Experience #3

Full Ride Scholarships

            Piggybacking off of my story about myself playing sports in high school, another great experience took place after that, when collegiate Division I schools were offering me full ride scholarships for baseball. I had always saw the National Letter of Intent Days of signing for Division I football players, and I always thought it would be cool to do that same thing. I had the opportunity to do that.

            It started my junior year of high school, after we had won the state championship my sophomore year, and I was a All State First Team member for Washington 3A baseball. The summer of my junior year I had the privilege to play on a summer ball team with some of the best baseball players in the Northwest. We traveled to Omaha, NE – Honolulu, HI – Dallas, TX – Nashville, TN – Miami, FL – and China. It was such an honor and a privilege to be apart of this elite company. Every place we traveled to, their were scouts for all the Division I teams; Duke, Texas A&M, Texas, Cal, USC – you name a Division I team, and they had scouts at every place we played. It was towards the end of July when we went to China to play in the World Baseball Classic and that was the moment in the season where I was really picking up my game. The baseball conditioning coach for UW traveled with us and he took note on my playing.

            A few weeks later, after one of our baseball practices at UW, then baseball coach, Ken Knutson, came by and talked to me. He said he’d seen my highlight videos and that he liked what he had seen. We talked for only five minutes and asked if I and my parents would meet with him in the next week and of course I said yes! A few days later, I came back with my parents and we met Ken. He showed us around the athletic facilities and locker rooms and told me about how “prestigious UW is…” yadayadayada… The meeting took about an hour and a half and at the end of it, I got to meet former head football coach Tyrone Willingham and got offered a scholarship to UW! This was the happiest moment of my life. Words could not express how I had felt in that moment. I’ll be completely honest and say I kinda felt like a big deal. That summer I had received offers for scholarships to UW, WSU, Oregon State, Bellevue Community College and Cal – all of them were different, some were full rides, some were partial, but it still felt great to be wanted.