Claire Mallo '21 Recruiting Profile

My name is Claire Mallo and I go to Granite Bay High School in Granite Bay, California. I love this school and would like to attend a college similar to it in regards to it’s rigorous academic standards and school spirit. I don't prefer a certain size, but I want to show support for the school through football and basketball and other school events. The academic intensity should come from just being at the college level, but I do want to be challenged. I would want the opportunity to study abroad through a school program, but it's not a necessity. The majors I am interested in include mostly mechanical engineering or marine biology, I love both discovering how things work and the ocean. 

During the summer time, I love boating. My family and I go out on the lake nearby a couple times a week to wakeboard, wake surf, or just to have a nice dinner with the sunset. Wakeboarding is one way I get a workout in for the day, as it requires a lot of muscles that I don't use for regular activities or soccer. Wake surfing is more relaxed, once you get it down you don't use a rope or anything, you're being propelled by the wake provided by the boat. The wave can get more than 4 feet high, so carving up and down the wave is a rush. Boating is one of my favorite things to do in the summer. I also love to travel in the summer time- I enjoy hiking in forests as well as relax in the mountains surrounded by snow. My favorite is spending time on the beach, in the sunshine and playing in the ocean. 

I've been playing soccer for about ten years, starting when I was around five years old. I was playing a lot of different sports and decided soccer was my favorite. One of my greatest accomplishments in soccer is when I went to Austria, for a soccer tournament called United World Games, where I represented the USA with other girls from around the country. I was recruited by a group called AIST,  American International Sports Teams, who travel around America to pick up players from a variety of sports to play for the USA. The soccer, volleyball, and ice hockey teams spent two days in Germany, five days in Austria, and three days in Italy. In the tournament, my team went undefeated and won the gold medal.

Along with soccer, I also like play basketball, softball, and volleyball.  I played all three in junior high school while I played club soccer. The high school soccer season is one of my favorite parts of the year, I love getting to play with my friends that I go to school with and it's a nice break from club soccer. Another thing I enjoy is math, which leads to me wanting to major in mechanical engineering. I love how its like a puzzle, with pieces that fit together to solve different problems. Most of the time it can only be a right or wrong answer, and there's no grey area. It's my number one favorite class in school, number two being drama.

In drama, its a time to lose the right or wrong answer concept and start getting creative. Becoming another character and being able to have different personalities is a fun way to relieve stress and take your mind off of the difficult classes or homework that needs to be finished. Last summer, my family traveled to New York and saw the Broadway show Dear Evan Hansen, which was a great experience and helped me see how different professional theatre is from high school. It was also a phenomenal presentation with great lighting and a funny script. I recently saw Hamilton, which I had been wanting to see for a couple years. My drama teacher wrote an original musical called Ranked. It was a very relatable plot, about the overbearing stress of school and had a striking resemblance to the recent college scandal, about parents paying for grades. The musical made local news as well as national news, and was seen by Broadway representatives. I was on the sound management crew, so I ran sound and put mics on all of the actors. I helped the director with rehearsal, standing in for people who may have been absent, so by the time opening night came around, I had the musical pretty much memorized. Along with being a fun couple of months, it was an amazing experience and helped my personal emotional and mental growth. I was casted in Hamlet for my school, playing Francisco, one of Hamlet's friends. I loved messing around with different ways to interpret the Shakespeare and making it understandable for those who may not generally understand Shakespearean.

Some things I like to do in my free time is play music and paint. I played piano in kindergarten up until seventh grade, but still sometimes play for fun. In band, I played flute in fifth grade then switched to french horn, which I played sixth through eighth grade. In jazz band, I played electric bass guitar and trumpet. I couldn't continue to high school band because of the commitment the band director demands from each member. After I had to quit, I taught myself acoustic guitar and ukulele and have been keeping up on that in order to not lose my musical abilities. I also like to paint. My favorite things to paint are nature scenes, blending together sunsets or dark skies to make a sunset or sunrise. 

I look forward to talking with coaches, visiting schools, and doing all I can to find the right college for me.