Niles is majoring in Business
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 Ella Niles, a sophomore who is majoring in Business, for this edition of Scholar-Athlete Spotlight.
The outfielder from Hesperia, California, had an eye-opening debut season in 2023 for the Crimson and Gray, hitting .308 with a .391 on-base percentage while tallying 26 stolen bases, which was good for sixth in the Sunshine State Conference. Following the season, Niles was named to the SSC Commissioner’s and Florida Tech Athletic Director’s Honor Roll.
Ella joined us to talk about what made her make the cross-country trip to Florida Tech and what she’s enjoyed about her time here so far.
Tell us a little bit about your major, what made you choose it and what do you want to do with it?
So, I’m a Business Administration/Entrepreneurship major. There’s not really a specific reason why I chose it, there’s just so much diversity in the business field and I just feel like I can do whatever I want with it. There’s a lot of opportunities and jobs in general with it.
When we talk with business majors, a lot of them tell us that they enjoy the experiences that they have outside the classroom in applying what they’ve learned, have you had an experience like that?
Last year, we went to the CAMID [Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Innovative Design] Center, and we collaborated with the engineer field, and we were able to create these little buildings with cards and they went through a variety of tests.
What we did as business students is we made sure that the safety regulations and everything was up to standards because we had miniature people on it. So if something happened with the people there was a violation, but we made sure that there were no violations. It was really cool because it was a different experience to see what else we could do with our major.
Is there a teammate or fellow athlete who you’ve become study buddies with?
Yeah, so there’s not many people on the softball team are in business, but there’s this girl on the basketball team, her name is Remingtyn Smith and we study a lot together and we help each other out.
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?
A lot of the time I like to listen to a specific playlist that I have on my phone, but I also really like to go to the library and study on the fourth floor, t’s very comfortable up there. So, I really like to study by myself and I’m a very independent person, so I like to study alone.
Now you have an interesting path to getting here, coming here from the other side of the country. When people hear California, hey think of three places, but where did you come from and what made you take the journey here?
I actually come from the desert in California. Not many people know where it is, but I live in the high desert in California, a lot of people think of palm trees when they think of California but I have a bunch of joshua trees surrounding me.
What made me choose here is that I’m about three hours from the beach in California, so I don’t really get much beach experience. But here, it’s 15 minutes, I love going and just looking at the ocean and just being able to walk the beach, especially when I have free time, which isn’t very often, but I love when I do.
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?
Softball has definitely taught me time management. I’m very, very good with my schedule, I always make sure it’s super organized and I make sure I have time for everything that I have on that schedule. Typically time management is just being able to know what I want to do with my time.
What advice would you give to an athlete coming to Florida Tech that has an interest in Business?
I would say to go and talk to your business professors. They’re the most understanding people ever and they will genuinely help you with whatever you need to be helped with. So, I would talk to them, they’re not as scary as they may seem sometimes and they’ll help you out a lot.
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