Renee Shaktivel
Staff Writer
Early on in her high school softball career, Emma Bordenkecher received an offer from Arizona State, a team that currently ranks sixth in the nation. But when the tides changed her senior year, she received an offer from Idaho State and quickly accepted to play for head coach Candi Letts.
Bordenkecher grew up in Lake Elsinore, California and has been playing softball since the age of four. Her mom played when she was younger, and her dad coached her teams until she was 12, so softball quickly grew as a way for the family to bond.
In high school, she was a four-year letter winner and earned all-league honors every season. When she was a senior she was named league MVP.
“My senior year was a really good year for me,” Bordenkecher said. “It felt like when I really came into my own. My freshman year here was really great. I was able to establish myself as a player and being a part of the team.”
While at ISU, her success continued as she earned all-conference honorable mention her freshman season, hitting seven home runs during league play.
Bordenkecher’s focus isn’t only on softball, she is also a nursing student.
While her time on the field seems to run smoothly, challenges soon emerged in other areas that most student-athletes have to face. Those challenges include finding a way to balance classes to maintain a good academic standing while games call for constant traveling.
When the season starts mid-February, the entire softball team is gone most weekends, causing them to miss Thursday and Friday classes. Freshman year quickly became a struggle of trying to find the balance between academics and athletics.
The challenges don’t stop with succeeding in school as diet and exercise is also a critical aspect of being ready for games. ISU’s softball team does not have any specific regimen that their players must follow, leaving it all up to the individual players to decide what is best for their bodies.
“They don’t want to change you as a player,” Bordenkecher said. “But I personally eat good and I feel like it helps my performance. As an athlete, you should make sure you’re putting good things into your body.”
When she and her teammates don’t have games, they bond by spending quality time together bowling and watching movies. With a group goal of making it to conference, and focusing on winning every pitch, they strive to succeed individually as well as a team.
“Pocatello is a change of pace,” she said. “When I go to the grocery store people ask how I am and how was my last game. I needed to be able to experience that.”
After she finishes up a five-year plan of playing for ISU and becoming a nurse, she will return back home to California.
“When I was growing up not a lot of people thought that girls could go all the way when playing softball,” she said. “But I always knew I wanted to play professional softball. With inspirations such as Jennie Finch, anything less than success is not an option.”
