Mallory Baruch posts on Instagram to announce her decision to commit to Florida Southern College. The opportunities academically and athletically helped Baruch narrow down what school to attend. Photo courtesy of Mallory Baruch.  

As the school year gets underway, planning futures is a common act amongst the seniors of Steinbrenner High School. Since Steinbrenner has hundreds of athletes the application season is a vital time for many seniors, including the student-athletes. With a love for their sport and a desire to further their education, many of them start by verbally committing to a college. Agreeing to play a collegiate sport means that a student-athlete agrees to attend the school before they sign a NLI (National Letter of Intent). On September 30th, senior Mallory Baruch announced her decision to verbally commit to Florida Southern College to play volleyball and study.  

“I’m so excited now that I’ve committed, but also feel a huge sense of relief” said Baruch after explaining how she’s been working on this for a long time.  

Throughout Baruch’s life, volleyball has been part of it for 9 years. Currently, she is the captain and a setter for Steinbrenner’s volleyball team. “I’ve known since about 8th grade that I wanted to play in college,” said Baruch. With this, the hard work began in freshman year and when the middle of sophomore year came around, the recruiting process started. Towards the end of her sophomore year, Baruch pieced together highlight videos of her playing volleyball in preparation. The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association) says that between the summer of sophomore year and junior year is when students can contact schools directly. During this time, Baruch sent out tons of emails that included an introduction to who she is and the highlight videos. Since then, she continued to follow that routine, including attending camps. 

With many college options, Baruch “chose Florida Southern because it’s close to home, which is very important to me…”. Florida Southern College is located in Lakeland, only a short one-hour drive. Not only is the campus near, but it’s also “…beautiful, and they have a great marine biology program that I want to be a part of as well” according to Malory. While there’s still more ahead for Baruch, this is an exciting new chapter that will be started for her in the fall of 2024.