ITHACA, N.Y. -- There was a moment in a mall — not a field or a stadium — when everything could have turned out differently for Big Red softball senior Lauren Holt.

The travel softball teams in the Cincinnati area were full. Holt was out of options. No one had returned her family's calls.

When the phone finally rang, it led her to a storefront batting cage tucked inside a shopping center — the kind of place you expect to find a Bath & Body Works or an Aeropostale.

Instead, Holt walked in knowing this was probably her only chance. She didn't think she hit well, didn't think she belonged. 

When the tryout ended, nothing about it suggested otherwise.

Then the call came anyway.

"I was so excited," she said. "Then I got to the first practice and realized 'I'm the worst one here.'"

That feeling didn't fade, but also gave her something to push against. Not a plan exactly, but a decision, simple and stubborn.

"I'm not going to be the worst."

Back home in Loveland, Ohio, that decision became routine. Every day, her stepfather, Todd Roberson, would come home from work and they would head to the field. 

Every. Day. 

Hitting, catching, whatever needed work. Reps that stretched into hours. Sessions that sometimes ended in frustration and tears. 

But they always came back the next day.

"He's been there for everything," Holt said.

The gap didn't close all at once. It closed slowly. A little, then a little more.

By the time she reached high school, Holt was on her way. She made varsity as a freshman. Playing against older competition, she didn't just hold her own — she stood out, leading her conference in batting average and earning first-team all-league honors.

"That's when it hit me," she said. "Like, I'm actually doing pretty good."

The path forward wasn't clean. Recruiting came at the wrong time, shaped by a world that had shut down due to COVID. No in-person evaluations, no normal rhythm, no certainty. Coaches watched through screens, if they watched at all. Camps were canceled, opportunities narrowed. On her own travel team, older players around her committed one by one, their futures settling into place. She was the only one left waiting.

She had some college offers, just none that felt right. It would have been easy to take what was available and move on, especially in light of her recruiting experience. Instead, it took one unexpected question - her travel team coach asking about her grades and getting the unexpected answer that her transcript was Ivy League material - to open a different door. Cornell entered the picture late, almost as an afterthought, and then all at once it became everything. She committed without ever stepping on campus, trusting what she had been told, trusting what she felt.

"I knew it was the best for my future," she said.

When she finally arrived in Ithaca, the adjustment was real. Biomedical engineering demanded more than she had ever been asked to give academically. Softball came with its own challenges — injuries that lingered, roles that shifted, expectations that didn't always match outcomes in the win-loss column. There were stretches where nothing felt easy, but it would have been hard to know that from the outside. 

Simply put, Holt became one of the most dangerous hitters in the Ivy League, the kind of presence in the lineup that changes how games are pitched and how opponents prepare. She ranks among the all-time leaders at Cornell and among the Ancient Eight in home runs, RBI, slugging percentage and on-base percentage. Earlier this season, Holt became just the third player in conference history to hit 40 career home runs and is chasing another Lauren - the Babe Ruth of Ivy softball, former Big Red All-American Lauren May '05 (58).

The numbers tell part of that story. They don't explain what changed.

"My mom texts me every day, but she texted me the other day crying. She said she's just so happy I'm having such a great senior year."

Somewhere along the way, the motivation that once defined her — the refusal to be the worst — gave way to something steadier.

"I just want to glorify God in everything I do," she said.

It started quietly, almost incidentally. 

A teammate invited her to Bible study. She went - at first, mostly for the free meal. 

Then she kept going. 

There was no moment of crisis, no sense that something was missing, but over time she saw joy in the faces of those who joined her at the table. Her understanding of the bible became a source of clarity, a way to separate performance from identity, success from worth. 

"It takes a lot of pressure off," she said, "knowing my worth isn't just softball."

For years, everything ran through that internal scoreboard — where she stood, how she compared, whether she was good enough.

Now, it doesn't stick the same way.

She still works. Still competes. Still expects more of herself.

But she's no longer defined by a single at-bat.

The Bible study didn't change that overnight. It wasn't immediate, and it wasn't dramatic. It was gradual. Conversations after practice. A different way of thinking that didn't depend on performance.

She talks to her family nearly every day. She still finds time to bake, the same way she once did with her grandmother, making things not just because she enjoys it, but because it's an easy way to make someone else's day better when she packages her sourdough cookies or cakes to friends.

When she thinks about what comes next she doesn't frame it in terms of what she's leaving behind.

Like any good catcher, she frames it differently.

What she'll miss isn't the recognition, or the numbers, or even the moments that make headlines. 

It's the time.

The practices. The routine. The quiet consistency of showing up - day after day - with those who believed in her.

"That was our time," she said.

The girl who once walked into a mall batting cage thinking she didn't belong became one of the most accomplished hitters in Ivy League history.

What she did with that feeling long ago has long been making the calls in her life — first, how she let it drive her forward, and eventually how she learned to let it go.

And behind the plate, where everything runs through her, that difference shows up in every pitch.