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Mikovich lives D-I dream at YSU
Former Fitch standout was late to NCAA recruiting game
By CHARLES GROVE
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown State softball team may don their red and black jerseys when they step in between the chalked lines, but Canfield native Cali Mikovich wouldn’t mind some blue collars to epitomize her and her team’s mentality.
The Austintown Fitch graduate was just named Horizon League Player of the Week and her team is riding a season-high, eight-game win streak, but Mikovich isn’t quick to forget just how long the road was to get to this point in her athletic career.
“I started the recruiting process really late,” Mikovich said. “Most coaches start looking at girls in seventh or eighth grade and look to sign girls by their early high school years. I didn’t start until after my junior season.”
A member of various traveling teams since the age of 12 took her as far away as Washington D.C., but Mikovich began wondering if the colleges were ever going to start calling.
“You send out skills videos, player profiles, anything hoping you’ll get a call back or something,” Mikovich said.
The goal of receiving a Division I offer looked to be running out of time when Mikovich finally began to appear to draw interest from a Wright State assistant coach at a showcase the Akron Racers put on. However this time, Mikovich had to hear in person that there would be no offer from the Raiders either.
“He was talking to me, helping me, breaking down my swing, but he told me, ‘We just filled that recruiting class,’ and I was so disappointed because he was the only coach at that time that had said anything to me.”
The disappointment of trying to catch the attention of college coaches for years did begin to break shortly after that when Division II Ashland University reached out with an offer. Not the dream of Division I athletics, but it was a start.
A short time later, YSU head coach Brian Campbell gave Mikovich’s high school coach a call and said he was looking to make her an offer.
“Getting a call from a really good D2 school was really nice but when I heard Youngstown State wanted me it was just surreal,” Mikovich said. “It was like watching one of your goals get accomplished after all the blood, sweat and tears you put into the sport. You’re finally seeing it pay off.”
Mikovich met with Campbell the next day, heard the offer, compared it to Ashland’s offer and now she patrols the outfield at the YSU Softball Complex.
Campbell’s Division I offer was a bit like Vito Corleone’s, just without the threat of violence.
“He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” said, Mikovich now a sophomore.
During the search for a school to call home, Mikovich sent out videos and profiles to many schools in the state including Wright State, Cleveland State, Kent Sate, Akron and Miami University. But when she smacks a home run against one of those schools who missed out the thought of revenge isn’t on her mind.
“I don’t like to look at it so much as ‘in your face’ or revenge,” Mikovich said. “I just think that I’ve worked for where I’m at and I don’t think how I’m performing or how my team is performing is just a fluke. We put in the hours. We work hard and any coach would be lucky to have a team like that.”
Mikovich is batting .384 (second only to Miranda Castiglione) and leads YSU (15-11, 3-0 Horizon League) with seven home runs and 27 RBIs.
While Mikovich didn’t find herself at a school with year-round, 80-degree weather and loads of softball-specific training facilities, Mikovich said those hurdles just make the Penguins work even harder with that blue-collar personality. And it makes their current success that much sweeter.
“We don’t have the weather to be outside all the time and we don’t have all the money in the world here either for great facilities like the teams down south do, but around here you’re just so used to working hard,” Mikovich said. “You work hard, you get your job done and you just get after it.”
YSU visits Horizon League rival Oakland Friday and Saturday. The teams will play a single game at 3 p.m. Friday and a doubleheader at 1 p.m. Saturday.
The Penguins’ next home contest will be a doubleheader against Niagara on April 6 starting at 3 p.m.