This week, Madison Aston, a 2015 catcher Amherst, N.Y., finalized her college plans by committing to a school she had been following for years.

In this first-person account, Maddie details her recruiting journey including how she got her future program interested in her and what she did to get an offer.

There are lessons to learn for young players from her approach to the recruiting process!

Maddie is a three-sport standout on pace to graduate with 12 varsity letters including five in softball, four in volleyball and three in ice hockey.

She’s been her school’s starting varsity catcher since the eight grade and the first in Amherst Central High history to start every game at that age. As a freshman she earned the first of her three 1^st Team All-Conference honors.

A good defensive catcher with a quick release, she’s only made two errors in the last two seasons and her offense is equally solid as she hit .358 as a sophomore and .500 last season.

On the club scene she plays for WNY Rally.

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With four Division 1 softball programs (Canisius, Niagara, University of Buffalo and St. Bonaventure) within a 15 to 30 minute drive from our house, I never had to go very far to watch very talented softball being played.

Although my dad and I had our pick of teams to go watch, more often than not we would choose to watch the area’s perennial power: the Canisius Golden Griffins. With 12 MAAC Conference Championships and 11 NCAA appearances, the team never seemed to rebuild but rather would just reload year after year.

Clearly, I knew about them—but they didn’t know about me.

I think I really began thinking about the recruiting process in eighth grade. I had become our high school’s starting catcher and was exposed to coaches coming to our games and recruiting some of the upper classmen. I thought that was the coolest thing and wondered why no one was talking to me. (I didn’t really know about the recruiting rules at that point.)

I told my dad that I wanted to play Division 1 college softball and wanted to do whatever it took to make that dream a reality.

As a 9^th and 10^th grader, I started signing up for all the local college camps. I also started going to individual showcases such as the Queen of Diamonds at Kent State, Legendary Softball’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Showcase in Virginia and Showball in Las Vegas.

It wasn’t until July of my junior year—as I was preparing to go to the OnDeck Softball Jamboree in Chicago)—when everything started to come together.

I was missing the Canisius Elite Skills camp to go to Chicago and although I felt bad about missing the camp, they understood and I knew I needed to go to Chicago. I kept working hard, sending videos and calling coaches.

On September 1^st of my junior year, I received numerous personal emails from coaches around the country telling me about their program and why I would be a good fit. I methodically pursued the various schools (going to more camps and then meeting with the coaches).

The whole process was so very stressful.

By July of my senior year, I had narrowed down where I wanted to play and was close to giving a verbal commitment to Canisius when Head Coach Mike Rappl retired after 35 years and 831 wins.

On the day Coach Rappl announced his retirement, I received a call from the newly appointed Interim Head Coach, Kim Griffin, who had been an assistant at Canisius for the last seven years, telling me about her vision for the program and how she saw me as a valuable part of that plan.

That meant a lot to me. It brought me back to the days when I thought about how cool it was that Canisius never rebuilt, but rather reloaded. And now I was going to be one of the pieces to help them do that.

Throughout the course of the next few months, I took my official visit to Canisius, got to meet the girls on the team, attend classes and spent some quality time with “Coach Griff,” who recently had the “Interim” title removed.

As to why I committed to Canisius, I can say that Coach Griffin was the deciding factor for me. Her enthusiasm, her friendliness, her commitment to the girls on the team (and to the College), her belief in giving back to the community, her belief in me, and her overall desire to win made my decision very easy in what was a very long process.