Student athletes are relatively common here at HT, but only a handful get to move on to the college level in their sport. It takes a combination of good grades, athletic inclination, sacrifice, and dedication to reach this level. Senior Cali Perillo knows exactly what it takes, as she started to play softball at the age of six.

“My dad played baseball his whole life, so I was always on the field,” Perillo said.

She only played t-ball for one year before starting coach pitch, then she moved on to fast pitch.

“I played 10-U when I was nine years old,” Perillo said. “I fell in love with it then.”

She then moved up to 12-U at the age of 10, and that’s when she says she really started to take the sport seriously. The team she played for was called the Diamond Girls.

“We built that organization up from absolutely nothing and we became number one in the state for our 14-U team at that time,” Perillo said. 

Perillo stayed with that team for six years total, starting out when she was ten years old up until she was 16 years old. 

“If I wasn’t in that environment, I would not love the game as much as I do,” Perillo said. 

Moving up in the program doesn’t always mean switching teams, as Perillo has kept the same coaches for her entire travel ball career.

“I still play for that same team, we’ve just changed the name to the Florida Fire Crackers,” Perillo said. 

So how does Perillo have enough time to dedicate to both travel ball and playing for the school?

“Travel ball is a year-round sport, we just take minor breaks for the school season,” Perillo said. “Before I started playing for the school in seventh grade, I had practice almost every day for my travel team.”

HT’s softball team schedule is slightly different.

“For Holy Trinity, our practices are everyday, Monday through Friday, from 3:30 to 5:30,” Perillo said. “During our pre-season training, we do four days a week with one day of speed and agility training to prepare us for the spring season.” 

Practices differ from game to game, depending on how well they did at the most recent one.

“During the season, we have field practice everyday,” Perillo said. “A typical day at practice is offense-defense training, depending on how well we do at a game. So if we don’t think we did well offensively, that’s what we’re going to work on at practice.” 

With all of the games and practices that being a great athlete requires, one is prone to injury.

“I play third base and shortstop, the left side of the infield, and I used to be a pitcher,” Perillo said. “I had gone through a back injury and I realized that this was going to get in the way of me playing in college, so I had to make a decision, which was either to keep pitching and potentially ruin my chances of playing collegiate level softball, or to stop pitching.” 

This injury ended up opening new doors for Perillo.

“I always wanted to be an infielder, but I needed to pitch for Holy Trinity,” Perillo said. “I had to put myself first and I continued playing third base and shortstop, which is what I got recruited for.”

For most, deciding that you want to play a sport in college is best decided sooner rather than later.

“My recruitment process started when I was in eighth grade,” Perillo said. “That’s when I made the decision that I wanted to play in college.”

College teams can’t make a player an offer when they’re in middle school, so beginning the process really starts with experience and exposure.

“My dad helped me to get as much exposure as early on as I could because it’s never too early to start,” Perillo said. “I had been recruited by a scout at NSR (National Sports Recruit). She helped me to get a profile out there on the NFR website, and it was made for me to be recognized, and it gave them my resume of who I am and what I do.”

The recruiting process only gets more intense and hands-on the older you get.

“I didn’t start taking the recruiting process seriously until about tenth grade because that’s when I was like ‘ok this is starting to get serious’,” Perillo said. “When you’re a junior, you can get offers after September 1st from D2 (division 2) colleges. August 1st is when you can get offers from D1 (division 1) colleges.”

Cali is currently committed to the University of Tampa.

“I knew that I wanted to stay in Florida and I didn’t have any opposing thoughts to the schools who’s camps I went to, but there were two schools that really stuck out to me, and it was UCF for the longest time,” Perillo said. “That was until I went to UTampa’s campus and I absolutely fell in love with it.” 

So how was Perillo able to achieve her goal of playing at the University of Tampa?

“UTampa was holding a very intimate clinic, which only had about 10 or 12 girls,” Perillo said. “Normal camps have about 150 to 200 girls, so it’s really hard to stand out.”

She felt confident enough in her play, and she was hardly even nervous about messing up. The big question was whether or not she would get an offer. 

“When the camp was over, I felt great,” Perillo said. “The head coach goes, ‘alright thank you all for coming. Cali Perillo, I need you and your dad to meet me in my office after this’, and I felt like I got the golden ticket. My dad started tearing up and it was just amazing.” 

Perillo was able to commit during her junior year of high school, and looks forward to getting to know her teammates in Tampa. 

“It’s been two years since I’ve been committed and I finally got to sign in November,” Perillo said. “It’s all been amazing ever since.”

Perillo hopes to major in psychology so she can work with and help children after her days of playing softball.