Willy’s Rockies lost the World Series to the Boston Red Sox that season. But on that hallowed ground, the Taveras family got to bring baby Marina to the field. She will never remember those moments, but they would be immortalized in photos.
“She looks at the photos and she sees (David) Ortiz holding her,” Willy says. “We have one of her and Matt Holiday’s son, Ethan.”
Now at Colgate, Marina is slashing .339/.397/.726 through her first 20 games and is tied for the team lead with six homers, as of press time. Those numbers have earned her two Patriot League rookie of the week nods. And she’s coming for the Raider record books next.
The first-year home run record for a Colgate softball player is 13. Marina is on pace for 15 — and that’s not even including Patriot League tournament games. If she hits 16, she would tie the single-season record by any Raider.
The key to Marina’s prolific start has been her swing. The swing that has hardly changed over her career. The swing that makes the same clunk on the softball nearly every time. The swing she developed with her dad.
“He definitely had a ton of influence with my swing and what it turned into,” she says. “I don’t touch it because he helped me with it, so I don’t really want to change anything.”
Throughout Marina’s career leading up to Colgate, Willy was her only coach. But now, 1,500 miles from her Texas home, she’s had to adjust to life away from him. She takes input from her Colgate coaches, but still gets advice from her dad too. “He’s still coaching me even though we’re so far [apart].”
Sometimes Marina and the Colgate softball staff will talk about her mechanics. Whenever one of them makes a suggestion, they’re usually met with the same response.
“Sometimes we’ll suggest something to her and she’ll say ‘my dad told me the same thing,’” Colgate softball head coach Marisa Lamison-Myers says. “If we’re saying the same thing he is, we’re probably doing something right.”
All the coaching paid off quickly. In her first collegiate plate appearance, Marina smashed a home run over the left-center field wall. She wasn’t trying to hit one over the fence, but her swing drove the ball farther than she meant.
“She comes and hits the ball, and the ball just goes differently,” he says. “People [say] ‘the one that hits the most in the Taveras [family] is Marina.’”
It’s high praise, but it might not be unwarranted. Marina has always strived to be like her father. She used to watch his highlights in admiration. Years later she’s doing damage at the plate against the best of the best.
And now it’s Willy’s turn to look up to his daughter.
“She’s way better [than me],” he says. “She’s a whole different level.”