Casillas is majoring in sports management
BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Being a scholar-athlete at Florida Tech takes an incredible amount of hard work and dedication to excel both in the classroom and on the field. We caught up with Panther softball player Celeste Casillas, a senior who is majoring in sports management, for this edition of Scholar-Athlete Spotlight.
The shortstop from Hayward, California, has enjoyed a breakout in 2024, hitting .300/.378/.386 with 11 RBI and five extra-base hits through 31 games.
Following the 2023 season, her first with Tech after transferring from the College of San Mateo, Casillas was named to the SSC Commissioner’s and Florida Tech Athletic Director’s Honor Roll.
Celeste joined us to talk about what made her make the cross-country trip to Florida Tech and what goes into keeping a good balance during the season.
Tell us a little bit about your major, what made you choose it and what do you want to do with it?
I got into sports when was a kid, I think I started playing sports when I was five. I’m 22 now and have a lot of experience with sports but I’ve also really been a fan of sports, football is one of my favorite sports ever. I’ve always wanted to learn how to apply the business side of things to sports.
There’s event management, player personnel. I want to work in baseball, so director of baseball operations has always been a big spotlight for me that I’ve always wanted to go into.
So, just learning how to get the management side of it, learning how to manage people, learning how to tap interpersonal connections with them, and understanding that there’s more than just the sports side of big professional baseball leagues and all that, that was something that was of interest to me.
When it came time to transfer, what was it about Florida Tech that made you want to take the cross-country journey?
I had to really get myself ready to make a big leap. I’ve always been so close to home my whole life, I went to junior college no less than 20 miles away from where I grew up.
So, I think just taking a big leap and getting ready to get going with my adult life, that was a huge, important stepping stone for me.
Something about Florida Tech was the beach also. When I got taken out here on my visit, I was just blown away compared to California beaches. Also, the people out here are great. Their academics are great, they’ve stood out to me since I first looked into the school but when I got here, it was home.
Softball has a very busy spring schedule with a lot of road trips, how do you make sure you stay on top of your studies and your sport during it all?
It’s just the big thing that everybody’s always told that athletes, it’s just time management. Sometimes there are lapses in our time management where we have to kind of pick up the pieces and try to push on as fast as we can. But for the most part, I know me and my teammates, we just we learned how to manage our time really well.
Our practice schedule allows us to manage our time pretty well, at least it does for me. Also, being able to have study groups or at least people that I can connect with to study or get notes or if I miss a class from games, it’s easy to stay on track.
Is there a teammate or fellow athlete who you’ve become study buddies with?
Actually, this year I finally got my first class with a softball teammate, which is great. Me and Ella [Niles], we talked about our one class, Cross-Cultural Management, which has been great.
Last year and this year, I’ve had classes with different athletes from a bunch of different sports. So, keeping up with them throughout classes and projects has been great.
I’ve also had study groups with people who aren’t athletes, and that’s been a really interesting experience for me because I’ve never really gotten to work with people who weren’t athletes. So now I’m working with them, it’s understanding how different our schedules are but also understanding that what they do is just as just as crucial as what I do.
What are some things you need to get the most out of study time? Do you have a playlist or need to be by yourself in a room?
For me personally, I’d probably just say music and being able to have a place where I can just zone in on my work because sometimes I kind of get sidetracked.
I like to sit in my living room, I like to go to the library on the fourth floor and just kind of zone in on my work and be able to focus on getting as much as I can do as quickly as possible too, just because of the schedule of athletes.
It’s also making sure I’m doing the best work I can, so I like to listen to music. I like to have my air pods in, and I also like to be in a place where I feel comfortable and be able to feel like I can get my best work done.
How has being a collegiate athlete prepared you for what you’re doing now and are there lessons from the field that you apply to your studies?
Growing up, I’ve always learned that you’re never out of it, no matter what the situation is and that’s something I’ve always carried with me. It helps with resilience and helps with integrity as well, which I’m big on.
Something that I want to go into is something that not a lot of women typically go into. I want to go into a director of baseball operations for a professional team or director of player personnel, but I have to work my way up, and to work my way up, I have to climb through a lot of different obstacles and to do that, I have to understand the mindset that the game is never over.
You have to be resilient; you have to overcome things that you didn’t think you could and learn how to maneuver and find ways to make it work. So
What advice would you give to an athlete coming to Florida Tech who has an interest in Sport Management?
I’d say as soon as you get here just network, granted as athletes, whether that’s people that are just interested in sports or people that are just classmates, just network and try to get to know as many people as possible, it’s definitely very beneficial.
The school is very small, so having people that are on your side, people that will help you throughout your season and in your offseason, I think it’s going to be very beneficial for any student-athlete.
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