Making a name for herself and persisting to achieve whatever she can, Marlee Cavitt is a dual athlete, and nothing will get in her way. 

Cavitt is a 19-year-old athlete from Sacramento, California, and since high school, she has done everything in her power to compete in her favorite sports, sprinting and soccer. Before coming to NMSU for her sophomore year of college, Cavitt committed to the University of Portland in Oregon. In Portland, Cavitt attempted to achieve her goal of being a dual athlete in college, but soon found herself overworked.  

“I was like 18 credits in, 10 miles a day, really sad, pale,” Cavitt expressed. 

Cavitt was granted little to no breaks in Portland and was participating in both sports at the same time while taking on the struggles of college life. She came to the realization that in order for her to carry out her passions of doing both sprinting and soccer throughout her college career, she needed to find a new school. 

“There was a point at Portland where I wanted to quit soccer and just run track,” Cavitt said. “But now I’m here, I’m like, so blessed to have this opportunity.”  

This is Cavitt’s first year with New Mexico State and she said she couldn’t be happier. Cavitt visited the campus in May and fell in love. She said the soccer and track coaches at NMSU were all welcoming, anticipating her arrival and offering her a chance to fulfill her athletic dreams. 

“I remember being on the phone with my mom, just crying,” Cavitt recalled. “I was like, ‘I have to come here’ the program is great, the track’s great!” 

Now, at NMSU, Cavitt is proving to everyone that she can compete in two sports while studying kinesiology, a science she was inspired to learn from watching her younger brother attend his occupational therapy appointments. 

Due to her mother being a University of Portland alumna and involved in their soccer program, Cavitt shared her prior reluctance to committing to NMSU. She felt the need to carry on her mother’s legacy at UP, but after finding herself so unhappy in Portland, she knew a change of scenery would be the best for her. 

“It was like a plot twist, no one thought I was gonna take a leap and, like, I did it,” Cavitt said. “It’s so great, I have my little group of friends, I’m slowly meeting the track girls.” 

Cavitt has the pleasure of participating in one sport while the other is in its off season. During the fall, she primarily focuses on soccer, but as the seasons change and spring approaches, both the soccer and track teams will begin to share Cavitt’s skills, and she’ll transition into sprinting. 

“We’ll start sharing her a little bit more as this fall starts to kind of wear down a little, and that’s where we’ll find out a little bit more of the challenges and how we manage,” said women’s soccer coach, Rob Baarts. 

Coach Baarts said communicating with the other coaches — Joseph Rath, head coach of track and field, and David Verburg, the sprinting coach — will benefit Cavitt tremendously. Cavitt is the coaches’ first dual athlete they’ve shared, so they are approaching this exciting endeavor with caution, being mindful of her capabilities. 

“I’ve seen it done before,” Baarts said in reference to coaching a dual athlete. “It is difficult, and I can tell, playing one sport is hellacious. Playing two sports in college is very difficult.” 

Rath stated the coaches plan to watch over Cavitt’s practices and workouts within each sport to understand when she may need a break. 

“It’s just a matter of monitoring training days,” Rath said. “Everyone has a personal schedule built out. So, she’ll have a day on, day off, rest day schedule.”  

The moment Baarts notices Cavitt become stressed, he shared he is willing to cut back on her practices to give her a moment to regroup. So far, there have been no challenges to her ambitions. 

“She’s a tremendous athlete; that helps us a ton,” Baarts expressed. 

Cavitt shared how her teams have felt like a family so far, their support has made her feel more at home in Las Cruces. She said the coaches have been nothing short of encouraging and her teammates never fail to have her back. She stated that having good coaches is an important part of her journey toward success, and Baarts, Rath, and Verburg have been extremely helpful to her. 

“I always hear horror stories [at other colleges] of ‘the coaching is so bad, it’s so toxic’, but there’s not a toxic bone in any of the coaches’ bodies,” Cavitt said. 

She expressed her thankfulness to Coach Baarts, who fully embraces her ritual of wearing her hair in pigtails for each game. 

“He [Baarts] knows I’m super superstitious, and I always love to wear my hair in pigtails, because I wore them in pigtails versus USC, and we tied in the last 30 seconds,” she shared. 

Cavitt holds many outlooks on the sports she loves, and expressed how both soccer and sprinting provide different types of competition. Cavitt referred to herself as the competitive type, and said winning was always important to her while growing up. 

To her, sprinting is a competition against herself, as she’s racing time and striving to beat her own records. She appreciates the contrast between the two sports, with the variables of soccer, like a potentially slanted field or a deflated ball, and the self-reliance in sprinting. 

“I like that it’s kind of on me, you know?” Cavitt said, in reference to sprinting. “It’s me versus the clock, it’s not me versus anyone else.” 

She said these moments are always fleeting — the times of being a dual athlete and basking in the moments of college may not last forever. Cavitt does what she can to appreciate every moment she is given. Her goal is to always strive for the next best thing and take hold of what this all has to offer.  

“Life is too short to make yourself miserable for someone else,” Cavitt said. “Be a little selfish.” 

This story was originally published on NMSU Round Up on October 18, 2024.