Stefanie Frei looks back on the four years she's spent playing softball at CSUB and realizes how far herself and her teammates have come since the spring of 2008, when the 'Runners, a Division I transition school, were just beginning their journey at the highest level of competition.

"I felt that as a team over the years we've just become more mature," said Frei, who has earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration with a concentration on sports management. "We went from being freshmen playing at UCLA and being in awe saying 'wow this is so cool,' to playing big-time teams my senior year and treating it like any other game. The way we handled ourselves got a lot better over the years."

While the stress and challenges of being a student athlete are often loathed, Frei says playing softball actually made the college experience, academically and socially, a lot easier.

"It was easy for me to adapt to everything as a student athlete because you make friends so quickly with your team and it just made the whole experience so much easier," she said. "I liked the small community aspect of the school and the teachers kept you involved because the classes are so small, it was really good for me to stay focused and I think being an athlete just really helped with everything.

Frei's accomplishments on the diamond include a solid 2010 campaign when she hit .353 in the 'Runners inaugural season of play in the Pacific Coast Softball Conference while logging eight multi-hit games.  With some new-underclassmen power-hitters coming into the CSUB lineup in 2011 Frei's numbers changed a little at the plate, she only managed 96 at bats in 35 starts for CSUB, but hit .221 with a team-second-best 6 doubles and a .958 fielding percentage in the CSUB outfield. The ups and downs of college softball helped Frei learn a lot about herself too.

"I learned how mentally tough I was and just built on that when I was in a rough spot that I had to fight through," she said. "I learned a lot about myself and how much I could take."

While her career includes plenty of on-field highlights, her personal favorite being a catch at Santa Clara in the 2010 season that robbed one of the Broncos of a three-run homerun, it was people that were her ultimate highlight.

"I built a lot of relationships here and that was the highlight for me," said Frei. The girls I met playing, the relationships that didn't necessarily change me but helped me grow we're special."

Frei is now entering the job market, working with groups like 'Athletes to Business' to try to help her start her career. She hopes to work with a sports team in either event planning or public relations.

"I picked that because I've always liked sports and I always told myself I wasn't going to have a boring job and I would do something I love," she said. "I loved all my sports management classes and I wanted to do something after college that I loved as well."

As far as softball is concerned, Frei's playing days might be over but she isn't ruling out the possibility of returning to the diamond and coaching at the grass-roots-level of the sport.

"I think if I were to coach softball, I'd go back to Little League," she said. "Ask any player and at that time, your life was the sport, you had so much fun playing it and I'd just like to be around those kids and teach them and help them. It's really cool at that age."