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“You grow a passion for the game,” she says. “I
alomino, at 20 years old, has played the game
Coming back in Pfor 16 years. love doing it.”
“I was 4 when I started T-ball,” she says, When Palomino moved on to Mission Viejo
the 2018 season, swigging on a water bottle in the players’ comfy High School, her acclaimed Aunt Toni was one of
lounge at Hillenbrand a couple weeks before the her coaches. Playing with Taylor McQuillin, now
Palomino worked double-homer against Grand Canyon. Dressed in a pitcher on the UA team, Palomino lettered all
workout pants and an Arizona tank top, she sinks four years and helped the team rocket to fame.
In 2014, “Mission Viejo won the national
so hard on the down into the couch and eyes a bruise on her championship,” Palomino exults.
wrist.
“I got hit last Wednesday,” she explains Outside school, she played for USA Softball’s
field and in the nonchalantly. The game was a double-header win Junior Women’s National Team, winning a
against New Mexico State. “You just shake it off.” gold medal, and for a club team that won three
classroom that Growing up in a big, sports-loving family national titles.
in Garden Grove, California, southeast of Los Palomino had multiple college offers, but she
she was named Angeles, Palomino lived just blocks from a rec chose Arizona — and not only because it was her
aunt’s alma mater.
center that was home to T-ball and other kids’
sports. “I stepped on campus and fell in love with it,”
Sophomore Female A brother a year older played flag football, she says. “It’s a family atmosphere. Coach (Mike
and her stepdad had been a hoopster. Her little Candrea) is like a second dad.” And, she adds, “I
Athlete of the Year. brother, now just 5, is a “hurricane” who likes love the heat.”
football, soccer and basketball. When she tore up her right knee in her first
But the female side of the family is firmly in month on campus, Arizona’s family atmosphere
the softball camp. Her older sister “was always really helped.
playing softball,” Palomino says, “and my mom “My freshman year was a low point for me,”
played softball in college.” she says. “I was away from home, and I’m very
And her aunt, her mother’s sister Toni family-oriented. But I learned I had a family here.
Mascarenas, was a first-team All-American A lot of people were in my corner.” As a Christian,
softball player at the UA and a 2006 Hall of Fame she adds, “I relied on God and the Bible and my
inductee who led the Wildcats to the women’s faith.”
NCAA College World Series championship in 2001. The injury, her first ever, happened during
At the time of her induction, she was in the NCAA an ordinary play. “I went for the ball on my left.
top-five record books for home runs in a season I jumped for it. My right leg came down first
(25) and career RBIs (245). and twisted. I was on the ground screaming and
Palomino’s grandmother, the progenitor of crying.”
these powerhouse athletes, is her biggest fan. After rehabbing the knee for two months, she
“My grandma’s been to every game series,” had surgery during Thanksgiving week — a tough
Palomino says with a grin, adding that she goes by time made easier by a visit from her mom, dad
plane or by car, whatever it takes. and little brother. The family dined on take-out
Palomino never had an interest in any sport turkey.
but softball. “I tried soccer for a few months and Palomino lost the entire season, but she
hated it,” she remembers. gained a year to heal. And the next season, 2017,
From T-ball, she quickly moved on to under-8 she was dynamite on the field, racking up a slew
and under-10 local teams, and then joined a of honors, from Pac-12 Freshman of the Week
travel team for gifted players. The team took to eighth-most runs by a freshman in Arizona
regular trips around California and even went to history.
tournaments as far away as Colorado and New
Jersey.

48 ARIZONA ALUMNI MAGAZINE