It was just three years ago when San Diego State senior pitcher Rebecca Arbino was standing on a pitching mound in College Station, Texas representing Texas A&M University. Fast-forward to today and Arbino wears the Aztec uniform just as proudly as she wore her Aggies uniform, but the change from Texas to California hasn’t slowed her down one bit.
Instead, Arbino has successfully transitioned into the Mountain West Conference style of play and uses her Big 12 Conference experience to her and the team’s advantage.
“I was really surprised last year how competitive the Mountain West was,” Arbino said. “I honestly hadn’t been anticipating that. But I was very surprised how well all of the Mountain West teams competed with what I thought the Big 12 teams did.”
Arbino was prepared to compete in both conferences because of her early background in softball. She had played since she was 7 years old on her dad’s softball team and was a four-year starter at Clovis High School in Clovis. During her four years, she totaled 695 career strikeouts and was named second-team All-State in 2008. That same year, Arbino also played club softball for the Corona Angels, where she helped her team get second place at nationals.
For Arbino, those early years provided a foundation that helped her develop her skills and get ready to play college softball.
“That’s when you learn if you want to continue at the next level or not and, obviously, I did,” Arbino said.
Arbino went on to play for the Aggies for two years with a very successful freshman year. Arbino posted a 12-8 record in 20 starts in the circle. She recorded an average of 2.88 of earned runs allowed per game and she struck out 84 batters in the 129 innings that she pitched.
As a sophomore, Arbino’s talent continued to grow as she led Texas A&M with 28 games started, 19 wins, nine shutouts, one save, 187 innings pitched, 144 strikeouts and with a .215 opponent batting average. While Arbino was an Aggie, she was able to experience the NCAA Tournament twice.
However, Arbino still didn’t feel at home in Texas and she began to look for a school closer to Clovis.
“I picked Texas A&M because, if you’ve ever been on that campus, you just fall in love with it,” Arbino said. “It is an amazing atmosphere. The people are incredible and the softball program is obviously a very good program there. I knew a couple of the people on the SDSU team before coming here because I played with them for travel ball forever and I just met the coach and she was so upfront about everything. I absolutely loved the head coach Kathy Van Wyk. So that did it for me.”
Shortly after, Arbino headed to SDSU for her third year of softball play. Arbino redshirted her first season as an Aztec because the SDSU team already had a star line up of pitchers.
But Arbino was glad she came when she did and got the opportunity to watch before she actually played.
“It was an easy transition for me only because I took my first year off. So I kind of got to see everything before I was thrown into it,” Arbino said. “It was really nice.”
Despite her year off from playing in regular season games along with transitioning to a new school and conference, Arbino picked up her junior season right where she left off at Texas A&M: very successful.
In 2012, she was named to the All-Mountain West Team and honored as the Mountain West Pitcher of the Week twice during the season. Arbino also led the MW with 2.02 earned runs allowed and four saves, which ranked fifth in SDSU’s single-season history and tied for 16th in the NCAA rankings. During her first season, she also helped the Aztecs reach the NCAA Tournament.
After playing her first season in the MW, Arbino feels the differences in the conferences have made her a stronger pitcher and has learned a lot from playing against such a variety of schools.
“Both conferences have done outstanding, I feel like, in hitting. I mean UNLV and New Mexico and everybody in our conference just has some really big power hitters, but then you can’t scoff at the Big 12 hitters from, like, the University of Oklahoma, Texas and schools like that,” Arbino said. “I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses in different areas.”
The 2013 softball season is underway and Arbino is quickly trying to recover from previous injuries—one of which includes turf toe in her left foot that she has dealt with in previous seasons.
So far, as a senior, Arbino has started in all eight games the Aztecs have played and she is excited to see how well the team will play this season.
“We came off the first weekend pretty well,” Arbino said. “We had two disappointing losses, but I think it’s just the team coming together and learning who we are this year as a team and clearing stuff out. But I think we are going to do very well. This team never stops surprising me on how cohesive we can be and its pretty awesome. I think that’s going to be very beneficial factor in the long run.”
SDSU has a busy and challenging schedule ahead of it. But with Arbino’s talent, determination and NCAA Tournament experience from both conferences, the Aztecs are sure to have another successful season.
“My goals for this season are just to get my job done every time I’m in there,” Arbino said. “I’m not really focused on anything, but every time I’m in there doing my job and if I do my job every time, our team is going to win a lot and that’s about all we can ask for.”
