When Lake City High sophomore Casey Stangel told her high school softball coach, Laura Tolzmann, that she was thinking of committing to play college softball at the University of Missouri, “she said I was losing my California side and getting into my Idaho side by choosing a Midwest school,” Stangel said.

Consider the transformation complete.

Stangel, a left-handed pitcher and hitter and rated one of the top softball players in the country, on Sunday gave a verbal commitment to play at Missouri, which is located in Columbia, beginning the fall of 2013.

“Missouri just fits me,” Stangel said Sunday via phone from California, where she was returning after playing in a softball tournament in Huntington Beach. “I really like the feel of the Midwest. They have amazing facilities, they have amazing coaches. They’re the No. 1 school in the nation in journalism, which is my intended major, and they’re always in the top 10 in softball. I’m going to a great school in academics and going to a great school in softball at the same time.”

Missouri coach Ehren Earleywine has taken his team to the College World Series in the last two of his four seasons. Last year the Tigers finished the season ranked eighth in the country, the school’s highest ranking ever.

“He’s taken all these girls that really, nobody wanted, and he’s won,” Stangel said. “They’re losing their big pitcher, Chelsea Thomas, the year before I come in. My intentions are to go and win national championships at his school, and as a player I can do that better there than I could at any other school.”

Stangel said her first contact with Earleywine was at a tournament in Boulder, Colo., the summer prior to her freshman year at Lake City.

“He told me, ‘If you’re interested in coming here, we have a full ride on the table,” Stangel said.

Stangel said Missouri is interested in her as a pitcher, first baseman and outfielder. At Lake City, she batted over .400 as a freshman and had a record of 17-7 as a pitcher. The Timberwolves tied for fifth at state. Stangel was the MVP of the 5A Inland Empire League.

Stangel was also being recruited by UCLA, California, Oklahoma, Texas, Boise State, Washington, Stanford and Notre Dame, among others. She said the majority of those schools had also offered her scholarships. The first recruiting letter she ever received was from Notre Dame when she was in the eighth grade.

Stangel was born in Danville, Calif., and lived in California until moving to Idaho at age 12 when her father, Chris, was named baseball coach at Coeur d’Alene High. She said last year, she intended to commit to California, but her parents, Chris and Debi, told her to make sure there wasn’t another place out there that she might like better.

Over the past couple of years, Stangel made unofficial visits to most of the above-mentioned schools that were recruiting her (all but Notre Dame). She visited the Missouri campus two weekends ago, and said the coach reminded her of her dad in the way he coached.

“I really believe in going to a place and having it feel right,” said Stangel, who said she would like to go into either sports writing or sports broadcasting. She’d also like to be a head coach for a college softball team some day. “As hard as that is (saying no to the other schools — if she hadn’t picked Missouri, she said she would have selected either Stanford, UCLA, Cal or Oklahoma), those schools don’t fit me.”

Since moving to Coeur d’Alene, Stangel has played for club teams in North Idaho and Spokane. Since the summer of 2009, she has been playing for the Sorcerer 18 Gold, based in northern California, which plays in tournaments mostly throughout the west. She plays a summer schedule, takes a brief break, plays a fall season that ends in November, takes a break, then plays with her high school team in the spring before rejoining the Sorcerers in June.

This past week, Stangel attended a three-day national recruiting camp in Walnut, Calif., conducted by OnDeck Softball. She’s been to three of these camps, which invite the top 20 players from each class and college coaches come and watch.

As for the missed school time, “I’m a pretty good student so it’s not hard for me to miss school,” Stangel said. “I’ve gotten used to learning out of a book.”

Stangel said she is fully recovered from the emergency appendectomy she had three days prior to playing for Lake City at state in May in Twin Falls.

“I had to tell coach Tolzmann I was fine and it didn’t hurt, but to be honest, it hurt really bad,” Stangel said. “But it was all right; I sucked it up. Some pitches, it would kinda pull and I was sore. The worst part was when I was hitting, because of that turning motion and the use of your lower abs when you hit.”

Stangel said she wanted to commit early, in part to remove the stress of the recruiting process, as well as because of the reality of recruiting.

“Coaches are pressured to have their teams set early,” she said. “The more you wait, the more the coach is going to be talking to someone else.”

Verbal commitments are non-binding, by either the athlete or the school. Stangel can’t sign a letter of intent until an early signing period the summer before her senior season of high school.

“I wouldn’t make this decision if I wasn’t completely sure,” she said. “This decision I’m sure of, and I’m very clear on the fact it’s non-binding, but if I tell a coach I’m committed to their school, I’m committed to their school — binding or non-binding.”