Senior Maili Jackson started her softball career at a young age playing T-ball. “My parents just put me kind of in T-Ball and then I went on a rec ball team and the coaches helped me fall in love with the sport,” she said.

Now, 15 years later, Jackson has committed to play softball at Waldorf University — a North Star Athletic Association conference school in Forest City, Iowa. This places her in the Falconer’s Next Level Seniors series, designed to showcase seniors who have committed to playing collegiate sports.

On the pitch, Jackson played catcher until seventh grade when she got switched to a new position. “I got put into [the] outfield … because I was a backup catcher and then I fell in love with [the] outfield so I committed to play [that],” she said.

During the search for schools, Jackson was reached out to by the Waldorf coach through FeildLevel, an athlete and coach connection app. She then confirmed her interest by calling the coach. She expressed interest in playing for the team, and the rest of the process came together, eventually resulting in her announcing her commitment on April 13, 2024.

The time after the decision was nothing short of relieving. “When I called the coach and I made my decision it was like weight-lifting, honestly, it was just like, ‘Oh, I know where I’m going. Now I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to play softball in the future,’” she said.

The recruiting and commitment process for Jackson went fairly smoothly, though she did consider other schools such as Pacific University and Park University Gilbert. After visiting the Waldorf campus just once, the decision was made. “When I went to Iowa I just fell in love with it,” Jackson said. “I was like ‘yep, this is where I’m gonna go!’”

Balancing school and sports can be a bit of a challenge for Jackson. Training outside of softball takes away much-needed homework time, leading to weekends being spent mainly catching up on assignments. The time some students have after school to go home and relax is not a luxury Jackson gets to enjoy, and instead she practices five days a week after school starting at 3:30 p.m.

Softball has to share the fields and batting cages with the baseball team, and a typical practice for Jackson’s team will consist of a half-and-half split between the two — opposite of whatever the baseball team is doing. “Either we’ll get the cages first and then we’ll go out into the field, or baseball will get the cages first and we’ll work out in the field while they’re in the cages, and then we’ll switch,” she said.

Though it can be hard to balance school and sports with all the practice and training, Jackson admires the community on her softball teams. “My club team [travels] out of state sometimes, [so] we get really close,” she said. “It’s all about the family aspect, especially here at La Salle we have freshmen … so you get to really connect with all the different grade levels.”

After the high school season is over, Jackson switches back to club, playing for Frost Elite. Club softball and high school do have their differences though. “Club softball’s more competitive, we travel more,” she said.

In addition to that, different ages of people on the teams add to changes in the atmospheres. While club softball places you with people exactly your age or close, high school is a range from freshmen to seniors. Despite that age range, Jackson expressed that this actually adds to the chemistry of the team positively. The older kids connect with the younger ones, and “we have that bond throughout our program,” she said, adding to the family aspect of the team.

Although she is committed to softball now, there was a time when her future with softball was called into question. “I actually stopped playing softball, because I didn’t want to do it … I wanted to focus more on basketball, and then I was just like basketball isn’t for me and I went back to softball and I just kind of fell in love with it again.”

One of Jackson’s biggest inspirations in life is her dad, who has always been in her corner no matter what. Inside the sports world, she looks up to her friend’s sister, Alyssa Daniell, who plays softball for the University of Oregon. Jackson grew up watching Daniell succeed in the sport and it “shows that most anybody can — as long as you put your mind to it, you work at it — anybody can go to that level,” she said.

All the experiences and time spent playing softball has taught Jackson many things with the most prominent being that it’s okay to not get it right the first time.

“You can only grow from failure,” she said. “I failed a bunch of times in softball and I can only grow from it if I just forget about it, take the next step, and go on.”

Correction: April 26, 2024

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Jackson reached out to the Waldorf coach first, as well as her connection to Daniell.