On March 17th Meredith Owen will travel to Italy to play softball for an Italian team. Owen is a Prep alum and played for our softball team which won the championship her senior year. After high school she played for Stetson University and won All-American in 2014. With a great final record, she was recruited to play professionally in the European Softball Federation.

Owen realized that she wanted to play softball seriously when she was ten years old. She did not know at this point if she could play professionally but she began participating in traveling summer teams. At first it was her goal to play college softball but she did not necessarily know if she would go past that. She played softball at Prep under the direction of Coach Caton and Coach Burke. Her favorite memory of Prep was winning the championship her senior year of high school. It was a difficult win as they were originally beaten by MRA. They eventually defeated MRA twice at the end and won the championship. Once she got to college she decided that her goal was to win a conference championship. Her freshman year season did not end well and as the only sound pitcher she resolved to turn it around. She trained at her brother’s crossFit facility, Coyote CrossFit, and improved her strength.

In her senior year the team won the conference championship and Owen was named a Division one third team All-American. This award won her the notice of Maurizio, the Italian coach for her new team, and she was recruited.

Owen is looking forward to traveling around for the team. “Throughout my softball career I have been able to travel a lot, and it has always been very eye-opening. The opportunity to broaden my perspective of the world is always something that has been appealing to me.”

There are 32 members (countries) in the European Softball Federation. Its headquarters are in Austria and it is responsible for governing the various tournaments and championships. The Italian team will travel all through Europe to play. In addition to the travel Owen also looks forward to the Italian food.

Owen has been able to make contact with one member of her future team and is relieved to know that there is at least one other person who can speak English. The girl that she met speaks english well and works as a personal trainer which is similar to what Meredith does at CrossFit. Owen looks forward to being able to meet the rest of her team and travel to Italy.