Hawks, Bruins, Mustangs, Spartans, Roadrunners, Northern Lights. These are just a few of the mascots that will have Santa Maria student-athletes playing for them come fall. A bumper crop of Santa Maria seniors will be attending college on athletic scholarships next year.
Track, football, wrestling, water polo, and basketball are just a few of the sports that’ll be represented when the class of 2010 gets to college this fall.
Pioneer Valley’s Hannah Miller was awarded a scholarship to San Diego Christian College last month. The point and shooting guard said that though she’s always considered herself a small-town girl (Miller’s been in Santa Maria her whole life) she’s excited about going to San Diego.
“I was hoping for so long; I’ve been saying since I was six years old that I wanted to move to San Diego,” she said.
Then there’s family: Miller said she’s excited she’ll be near her big brother, who left for the Navy when she was eight.
“I never had much time with my brother growing up. I can remember watching him play basketball when I was little; it’s one of the reasons I wanted to play,” she explained.
Besides the WNBA—Miller laughs at the suggestion—she hopes to study sports medicine when she gets to college.
“More on the rehab side; I don’t want to deal with injuries,” she said.
So, she wants to fix people?
“I want to help people,” she replied. “I’ll leave the fixing to themselves if they want to be fixed.”
Sports therapy seemed to be a common denominator: Saint Joseph’s Keith Bendixen and Natasha Kolbo are hoping to get into kinesiology and sports therapy, respectively. Well, Kolbo said she’s also considering 3D animation—turns out Avatar really made an impression.
She’ll have a good chance at either: Kolbo has a scholarship to UCLA for track and field, not bad for someone who started pole vaulting just eight months ago. Her current season record for the pole vault is 12’2”.
Bendixen is going the opposite direction, literally: the 6’5” left tackle and defensive end won a scholarship to San Jose State.
Best friends since their sophomore year, the two may be joined at the hip, but on the field they couldn’t have more diametrically opposed philosophies.
She loves practice and hates meets. For him, practice and lifting weights are just the grind you get through to play ball.
“It’s about how well you do, but it’s also about being happy with what you’re doing,” she said, as Bendixen shook his head.
“For me, if I’m pissed, it’s, ‘Let’s go kill somebody!’ I love it,” he said.
She just laughs at him.
“It’s totally different, we’ll never see eye to eye. For me, if I’m happy, I want to keep getting better,” she added.
So what’s their favorite thing about their respective sports? Kolbo, who wouldn’t touch a pole her freshman year, said it’s the adrenaline: “It’s a thrill, dude. The fact the pole could break at any second and you could die.”
Bendixen’s was a little more visceral: “There’s nothing better than destroying people.” (On the field, of course.)
Do either of them ever think of going pro? Kolbo only hesitates a second before answering: “I want to go to the Olympics.”
It wasn’t always her dream to go as a pole vaulter, either. Kolbo’s a former gymnast who had to give it up after 10 years because of a bone disease in her wrist.
“The docs said, ‘you have to quite gymnastics or you’ll lose 85 percent mobility in your wrist,” she explained.
Coming from a family where gymnastics is something of a business, Kolbo said she was in shock.
“It was the worst day of my life,” she recalled.
But that didn’t stop her from pursuing athletics.
“God does everything for a reason. Whether you like it or not at the time,” she added wryly.
Bendixen said that, sure, he’s thought about it, but he’s also honest with himself.
“The thing is, I’ve only played for three years; there’s still so much for me to learn,” he explained. “And who knows what’ll happen in five years? I could be a pro, I could be a bum.”
Staff Writer Nicholas Walter wants a scholarship in brewing. He can be contacted at nwalter@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 5-12, 2010.