University of Massachusets Athletics
Olympic Star Rising
June 01, 2007 | Softball
June 1, 2007
GLENDORA - Candice Molinari, born and raised in Glendora, left for Europe this week after being recruited for the Italian Olympic softball team.
The 22-year-old joins a roster of 30 women that will be pared down to 20 before going to Beijing, China in August 2008.
Molinari was initially told she would have to try out just to get on the 30-woman roster. But a spectacular season at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst may have changed that.
"I found out a few weeks ago that they put me on the roster already," Molinari said. "I was jumping up and down, and I was on the phone with my dad basically screaming. I could not believe it."
This is the chance of a lifetime for Molinari, in more ways than one. The International Olympic Committee is planning to drop softball as an Olympic sport after the 2008 Games.
Her recruiters flew her to Italy to meet her teammates on Monday. Despite her Italian heritage and newly-minted dual citizenship, she doesn't speak the language, and is learning key phrases from a travel book.
"I learned today to say, `I don't speak Italian,"' Molinari said.
It has been only a few months since a recruiter called to express interest and tell her to start working on her dual citizenship. Because her great-grandfather was Italian, she qualified. But without the national softball team there to expedite the paperwork, she would still be waiting for approval, her father said.
With her .401 batting average this season, Molinari became just the ninth student in UMass history able to boast a .400 or higher average, said UMass head coach Elaine Sortino.
Sortino recruited Molinari with an $80,000 scholarship after seeing the then-high school student on her travel team, Surefire, which toured all over the country.
At 5-foot-2 and with a slight frame, Molinari is small, but very fast, Sortino said. She succeeded in 87 percent of her stolen base attempts at UMass.
Molinari remembers playing ball when she was 5, and joined a year-round team at 10. Her mother, Joy, played softball in high school and coached Candice for years. Candice was also in the local Lassie League, played at Glendora High School and was on the travel team.
"Going to the Olympics is one of the goals that she wrote down when she was 12," Joy Molinari said.
When Candice was 13, she went to an exhibition game featuring the 1998 U.S. Olympic softball team, where talks with Olympic athletes had a big impact on her, said Molinari's father, Steve.
"It got her so motivated, she said, `I'm going to get a scholarship and play softball in college,' and from that day on she was committed - she gave up weekends and vacations," her father said.
Molinari will spend the next few months alternately playing with a pro team in Italy in Caserta, north of Naples, and playing on the Olympic team in qualifying games in Trieste.
The qualifying games begin June 9, but Molinari hasn't heard when she'll know for sure that she is going to Beijing.
"All I know is, I've got a six-month ticket, so I'll come home then," she said.
Whether she will return to continue training for the Olympics or simply to revel in a unique post-graduate European tour is an open question.
"When you're a little kid, your biggest dream is to go to the Olympics," she said. "This is the last year that they'll have softball in the Olympics, so it's now or never ... All I have to do now is beat out 10 girls."
alison.hewitt@sgvn.com
(626) 962-8811, Ext. 2730
