Mateo Zaragoza '20 Recruiting Profile

I hope that by writing this you get an understanding of who I am as a person and how I became an athlete. It's really hard to say when I became interested in my sport, I was always interested in almost all sports since I was a little kid. My dad has told me that I would wake up and fall asleep to ESPN on my tv since I was 6 years old and that really never changed as time went on. Watching sports had a huge influence on my life and who I have become, along with my family of course. My first sport was soccer and that moved from wrestling to football and then basketball. I loved basketball so much and wanted to play basketball in college but realized my height would hold me back and then slowly baseball came into my life.

One day I was begging my dad to go outside to throw the ball around with me after bugging him to buy me a new glove. It was 104 degrees and my dad said it's way too hot but after bugging him he set up a mattress in the garage and drew a square on it and said here pitch to this. After an hour of throwing the ball, my dad thought ok maybe he likes this and we should give it a go. At first glance, baseball didn't seem that hard and I felt comfortable with the body movements. 

My first year was fall ball in rev baseball and that was relatively easy other than all the lessons and practices. Then came my second year, which was more challenging and by now I was past AA and almost out of AAA and I had a friend that played for a Major team and I worked out one night with some of the guys in the fall of year two which led me to play on that team. In the summer, the competition was tougher and I was still working hard training on technique, training in the gym and trying to keep my grades up. As I progressed past fall and was about to start summer ball again I started to feel like maybe I wasn't good enough to play as the competition was a lot harder and my teammates bodies had changed so much more than mine. I even felt like I should quit but after talking to my coach Mike Murray he made me realize that it takes perseverance to achieve hard goals. I thought that I was going to quit thinking I couldn't handle the pressure but after playing summer ball with the team I realized how much I loved it and would miss it. I've been with this same team for Summer/ Fall/ Summer/ and getting ready to head back into Fall ball in two weeks.

I talked with family and realized that I should just keep the course, my focus as my Junior year starts is getting my grades up and getting homework done sooner by having good study habits. Studies are my top priority and I feel like college is a great learning curve for future success. What I want out of college is a better general education. When I get out of school I would like to be a Real Estate agent, so any business courses that will increase my knowledge in that area is what I'd like to study.

I feel like I'm a good candidate for your school because I'm a fast learner and I listen to instructions very well. I'm very punctual and an extremely hard worker. Thank you for reading my profile and I look forward to meeting you in the future.