Vienna Stars Softball Helps Collegiate Dreams Come True

The college recruiting process begins at a much younger age for today's athletes  than it did in past generations.

But 12 years ago, when Cathy Rollins and her husband started with the Vienna Stars softball team, the youngest players in the Vienna softball community didn't have many options to show off their talent, or grow and develop as players.

"Our goal was to rebuild the program from the ground up," Cathy Rollins said. "It wasn't a very strong program. It was declining. We had a very strong travel team at the top but the younger ages weren't as strong. So we wanted to rebuild the program from the bottom up."

Today, the Vienna Stars is a travel softball program that recruits Northern Virginia's best softball players to compete in tournaments throughout the country, with the end goal of developing girls' skills so they're in positions to be recruited to college softball teams when they graduate.

Rollins and her husband, Tony, entered the program when their daughter began competing for the Stars. Tony coached his daughter at each level of the program, while Cathy took over as executive director. With their daughter now in college herself, Cathy remains in charge of the Stars program while Tony remains the head coach of the Gold team.

As Tony and his daughter aged through the program, Cathy worked to back-fill the younger teams with more talent from the VGSL and other area leagues in order to strengthen the base of the Stars program. As those girls began to age and develop through the program, the Stars became more successful in all age groups. And today, the Vienna Stars are regarded as one of the area's premier travel softball programs. 

"It's a blue-collar sport in a white-collar community," Rollins said.

The program has seven teams with varying age ranges-  10U,  11U, 12U, 14U, 16U, and the 18U Showcase and 18U Gold teams. The idea is for girls to enter the program through the younger teams and grow through the program into their high school years.

The 18U Gold team is the program's top team, and most alumni  go on to receive Division I softball scholarships at the college level. The Gold team travels to major national tournaments, hosted by the Amateur Softball Association of America (ASA) or Premier Girls Fastpitch (PGF), allowing girls to be scouted and recruited by college coaches all over the country.

The Showcase team also produces collegiate softball players at a high rate, but Kevin Norris, a coach on the Showcase team, said many of those girls will go on to compete at Division II or Division III schools. The showcase team competes primarily in regional tournaments, with a small handful of national tournaments mixed in throughout the year. Girls are still scouted and recruited by local coaches at these regional tournaments.

Rollins said for younger teams, the Stars will draw kids from the Vienna Girls' Softball League (VGSL), but she noted anyone in the D.C.-metro area can try out.

Girls competing for the Stars can have demanding schedules, especially in the summer and fall months. Norris said teams will practice a handful of times a week, but they spend most of their time traveling and competing in tournaments against the nation's top competitors. Throughout the summer and fall the Stars will travel to different tournaments nearly ever weekend, saving only one weekend most months to relax at home.

But both Norris and Rollins agree the demanding schedule is part of the values of playing in the program.

"If you take your child to the movies, they likely don't even want to sit with you. It's not a shared experience between you and your child," Norris said. "But these weekend tournaments are truly weekend-long tournaments. The travel, the opportunity to support your child, that is a shared experience. They get a sense of accomplishment and you are able to share it with them."

Rollins also noted  the Stars not only better prepare the girls for college, but that it shapes them into better people as well.

"It's keeping them out of trouble," Rollins said. "Kids that age, you have the drinking, the partying, the drugs, everything else that's not good for them. Out here they're too busy. They're just so busy that they're not going to get into that kind of trouble. So we're hoping that he help mold their future."

"It's a passion that my husband and I have,"  Rollins said. "We do this for the ladies to help them fulfill their dreams. We put a lot of time and effort into it, but we do this for the ladies and we're hoping that we instill something in them that will make them want to come back and give something back to the community one day."