Before she set foot on Utah’s campus for an official recruiting visit, freshman outfielder Ally Dickman was familiar with Utah and its softball team. Four years before Dickman donned a Ute uniform for the first time, her sister Kate was playing for Utah.
“It was always really fun,” Dickman said of watching her sister play at Utah. “It’s fun to see how far the program has come, a lot thanks to her class. It’s been inspiring because I want to live up to everything that she has set up for me.”
In her four-year career as a Ute, Kate Dickman left a lasting legacy on Utah softball. In her senior year in 2015, Kate helped lead the Utes to their first postseason berth in nine years, batting .431 with 10 home runs, 36 RBIs and 21 doubles.
Ally started playing softball at the age of five and said she fell in love with the game at 11.
“I played soccer and softball, so at 11, my parents told me that I had to choose because it was going to be time to go competitive in one direction, and I just knew that I liked softball more and that I had a better future going forward in softball,” Ally said.
Ally attended Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo, Calif., and quickly became a softball star. In her junior year, she hit .495 with 24 RBIs, earning her an all-league selection. In her senior year, she declined a bit but still hit for .388 and knocked in 21 RBIs.
“I really enjoyed my high school softball experience. It was fun getting to play with my friends and get to be a leader was really fun,” Ally said.
Ally also played travel ball with the OC Batbusters during her time at the prep level. Creating another tie at Utah, freshman Maddie Roth was on that travel squad with Dickman, and they both ended up here at the U.
“It made the transition from being away from home to being here a lot easier and a lot smoother to have somebody that I knew and was comfortable with, and now I get to play with her [Roth],” Dickman said.
Dickman admits that while her sister had some influence on her decision to go to Utah, a plethora of other factors helped her decide to attend the university.
“I chose Utah because I wanted to play in a competitive conference like the Pac-12, I also wanted to be somewhere close enough to home where my family could watch me play, and I love the scenery and the school and pretty much everything else about it. It’s been a really good fit,” Ally said.
Ally said her sister Kate helped her in the transition from high school softball to the faster college game.
“[Kate] listens and she knows exactly what it’s like to be here, and she’s good at calming me down,” Ally said. “She’s good at being realistic when I’m not always realistic.”
Ally got the first of her 27 hits in her young and sure-to-be-illustrious Utah career thus far in the second game of the season against Georgia State.
“Once I got that hit, I knew, ‘I can do this. I belong, I deserve to be here,’” Ally said.
This year, Ally was thrust into the fire, playing in 32 of the Utes’ first 33 games. She is averaging a .360 batting average with eight doubles, a triple, two home runs and 18 RBIs. Ally was also named Pac-12 Freshman of the Week for the week of March 21.
Her coaches are a key component in her success.
“[The coaches] help a lot with not only the physical part, which is what you would immediately think of, but I think I’ve improved on my mental game more than I ever have, and I think that’s largely in part from my coaches,” Ally said.
The Utes are 22-11 on the season, including a 4-2 mark in Pac-12 play. While they currently sit outside of the Top 25 rankings, Utah has received votes in the ESPN.com poll and is making some noise at the conference, and national, level.
While the success is nice, Ally said her favorite part of being on the team is the time she gets to spend with her teammates.
“Being with the girls and just having a group of people that I can associate myself with on campus and having an immediate group of friends that I love and I get to spend all of my time with,” she said.
While her freshman season has certainly been a good one, Ally still has some goals that she’d like to accomplish, both for herself and the rest of the Utes.
“Just keep getting hits whenever I can and scoring runners. [For the rest of the] season, I want to improve my pitch selection and being smarter in the box,” Dickman said. “For team goals, I just want us to make it as far as we possibly can and be playing in Oklahoma City in June.”
With Ally playing the way she is right now, the thought of the Utes playing in Oklahoma City for the College Softball World Series isn’t such a crazy thought.
@JoeColesChrony