Athletes tend to look at their college years as fun, but with responsibilities.

Playing professionally, by comparison, seems more like a job.

Vanessa Shippy is no different.

Though many of the things the former Lake City High standout was doing the last couple of months as a professional softball player were the same things she was doing during her decorated and recently completed four-year career at Oklahoma State — where she was the face of a rising Cowgirls softball program through much of her time there, and became almost a revered figure in Stillwater.

Like interacting with fans, working with younger players and encouraging them to dedicate themselves to the sport, hoping to show them there are indeed opportunities after college softball.

“This is definitely a job,” Shippy said on the phone recently from Myrtle Beach, S.C., where she was wrapping up her first season with Scrap Yard Fast Pitch, a professional softball organization based in Conroe, Texas, just north of Houston. “It’s a grind, but it’s a fun job. It’s something that we get to do — we get to play softball.

“We have to make that effort to go out into the crowd and interact with the fans, otherwise our sport is not going to exist any longer at the professional level.

“Yes, it is similar to college — we’re fighting to get fans to our games. The NPF (National Pro Fastpitch) has been around forever, and people don’t even know that. Once we can establish a good base and get everybody excited about playing professional softball, hopefully it turns into something where it is a job, and people want to make a career out of it.”

IN THE midst of her senior season at Oklahoma State, in which Shippy would finish by starting all 234 games over her four-year career, the Cleveland Comets of National Pro Fastpitch drafted Shippy with the 11th overall selection in April.

Her Cowgirls teammates threw a watch party for her during the draft. NPF is a five-team league, with three of the teams international teams based in the U.S.

But after her Oklahoma State season concluded roughly a month later, in the regional round of the NCAA tournament, Shippy chose to sign with Scrap Yard, which won the NPF title in 2017, but pulled out of the league earlier this year.

Kenny Gajewski, Shippy’s coach at Oklahoma State the last three seasons, contacted Scrap Yard and said Shippy might be interested in playing for that organization instead. Scrap Yard is operating as an independent group this year, playing national and international teams in tournaments and exhibitions.

“It was closer to home (Stillwater), and it was a shorter season, and I really just loved what Connie May, who is our general manager, is doing with the program, here at Scrap Yard,” Shippy said. “I gave her a call, and she kept talking about how much she wanted to grow the game, and how she wanted to take the game of softball to the fans. And obviously professional softball is something that isn’t big yet, and I just loved what she was talking about, and what her goals were and what her ideas were on growing the game.”

May said Shippy was a late addition to the Scrap Yard team, and turned out to be “exactly what we needed.”

“Out of a respect thing, I wasn’t actively seeking anybody who was drafted, unless they reached out to me,” May said. “She did, and we were extremely excited that she did.

“She’s just very versatile. My M.O. is to get as many athletes as possible. If they’re athletic, they can play anywhere, and she can catch and play second and play short and play third, outfield ... I can do anything with her.”

Also, one of Shippy’s goals is to play on the USA national team. Scrap Yard, which has partnered with USA Softball, fields two teams — and between the two, there are around 20 current or former members of the national team.

“I’m on the same team with girls that I grew up watching, like Haylie McCleney (outfielder, Alabama, class of 2016), Valerie Arioto (infielder, California, class of 2012), Monica Abbott (a star pitcher at Tennessee, who graduated in 2007 and has been playing professionally for 11 years) and Aubree Munro (catcher, Florida, class of 2016), and all these great players,” Shippy said. “And so it’s very cool to be on the same team as them, and play right alongside them. This just presented me with opportunities that were right for me at the time, and I think I made an incredible decision.”

Team USA recently hosted its training camp in Houston, so Shippy and the other Scrap Yard players got to play against all of the national team members, be around the coaches, etc.

“It’s made me more comfortable going into tryouts (for the national team) in December,” said Shippy, 22. “That’s something that I really want to do, and hope to get an invite to, and I think this has helped me be more comfortable — I don’t know if it necessarily gave me any legs up or anything, but it’s definitely allowed me to be more comfortable and get to know the girls that hopefully I’ll be playing with.”

May said USA Softball was already aware of Shippy before she signed with Scrap Yard.

“They were actually the ones that brought her to my attention,” May said. “We have a really good relationship with USA Softball. They were like, ‘Have you seen Vanessa Shippy?’ I think she’s 100 percent on their radar.”

The other Scrap Yard team is called the Nationals — national team members who have signed with Scrap Yard play for the Nationals.

“We play each other a lot,” said Shippy, who saw action on both teams this season, sometimes playing alongside national team members. She played several positions.

May sees Shippy as a middle infielder, because of her quick release, and said the Scrap Yard coaches like her as a third baseman.

May said Shippy made the transition from college to pro softball very well.

“Next season, you’ll start to see her settle in, and you’ll see the Shippy that you’re used to seeing,” May said.

“I think if she decides to go back to play (for Scrap Yard), I think she will have a crazy good second year,” Gajewski said. “I think this first year was a wakeup call for her. I think she had to go back through the process of being a freshman again. I spent a lot of time with her on the phone early this summer, trying to talk her off the cliff each night because she was struggling ... as the summer went on, the phone calls were fewer and fewer.”

Rather than play on their home field in Texas, Scrap Yard and the Nationals travel the country, to the sites of some of the biggest youth (travel ball) softball tournaments in the country — Colorado, Myrtle Beach, Huntington Beach, Calif., to name a few.

In Huntington Beach they played in the International Cup, which included national teams from other countries. Other than that, most of their games are against each other.

Scrap Yard plays where the young players are, because those are the potential viewers of the sport, and the future of the sport.

Scrap Yard games are streamed for free online, and Shippy said they’ve had more than 2 million views of their games.

Like minor league baseball, Scrap Yard tries to make its games as fan-friendly as possible.

“That’s cool for our sport, because a lot of people don’t even understand that there is professional softball,” Shippy said. “I barely knew that there was a (professional) softball league, and I played the sport. That’s sad, because softball has been a part of my life forever.”

The good news — softball is back in the Olympics in 2020. It was voted out following the 2008 Games. Softball became an Olympic sport in 1996, and the USA won the gold medal in ’96, 2000 and ’04, and was silver medalists to Japan in ’08.

A few weeks ago in Japan, the USA earned a berth to the 2020 Games in Tokyo.

Gajewski said with the smaller rosters (14 or 15 players) in the Olympics, teams are looking for pitchers that can hit, and players that can play multiple positions.

“So she’s the right fit,” he said.

SHIPPY LEFT Oklahoma State holding at least a dozen school records, including the consecutive games started streak. The lefty-hitting Shippy batted .471 as a senior, and .404 for her career.

She was the Big 12 Player of the Year as a senior, and co-Big 12 Player of the Year as a sophomore, and she was in the conversation for national Player of the Year this season.

“The community in Stillwater completely changed my life,” Shippy said. “It gave me a place to be, a place to grow up, I met my future husband (Matt Fletcher, formerly Oklahoma State’s fan development coordinator and game day host) there. My whole life changed when I went to OSU, and I’ll forever be grateful to Stillwater, and the coaching staff, and my teammates. It was really a place to grow up and find myself.”

Shippy’s Cowgirls made the NCAAs the last three seasons, each time losing in the regional round.

“I feel if we’d had a little bit more success, she would have been even more recognized across the country — even more than she is now,” Gajewski said.

In choosing a college, Shippy said she wanted to go somewhere she could make a difference.

“That was something that was very important to me; that’s why I picked OSU in the first place,” she said. “I didn’t want to be just another person on a team that got looked past. I wanted to have an impact.”

Four years ago, Shippy and the other incoming freshmen met and talked about their goal of getting Oklahoma State back to the College World Series. The Cowgirls last made it that far in 2011.

“Obviously we didn’t get back to Oklahoma City, but our team made strides like crazy, and it was cool to be a part of that,” Shippy said. “I didn’t want to go to a school that had a professional team around it that everyone cheered for, and college was second tier to it. I wanted to go to a place where the college was the most important thing in the town.”

Gajewski said Shippy’s biggest impact on the program the last couple years was her effect on the younger players — and even the little girls who would show up at Cowgirls games wearing homemade jerseys with Shippy’s name and number on them. One girl even dressed up as Vanessa Shippy for Halloween.

“I’m just really proud of her for the growth that she had here,” Gajewski said. “When we got here, she was a hothead. She got out, she would slam her helmet, she was unapproachable for a bit ... the way she grew out of that was the most impressive thing.”

NORMALLY, SOMEONE who plays as many games in a career as Shippy has, does so at one or two positions.

Shippy played — and started — at every position during her time in Stillwater.

She started every game at second base as a freshman.

As a sophomore, she played in the outfield, the infield, and spent some time catching.

She was the catcher for the majority of her junior year, “and I played a little first base, shortstop, outfield ... I played everywhere,” she said.

As a senior, she played every game at third base.

“I can’t say it didn’t bother me immediately (moving around to different positions), because I’d played second base my whole life,” Shippy said. “As I got older, I completely understood why I was needed in those positions. I ended up being really thankful that I played them all because as a coach I think that is something that’s really going to help me.

“It’s helped me with the younger girls I get to coach. Coaches like to say ‘Hey, it’s helpful to be able to play multiple positions.’ But that person that’s telling them that probably played one position their whole life. At first it came as a shock to me, but at the end I became very thankful that I did it.”

Gajewski said Shippy playing different positions was part of her “value” to the team.

He told a story that, when Shippy was a sophomore, the starting catcher was injured, and the backup was inexperienced.

Shippy volunteered to catch — something she did at Lake City one season. Gajewski said he needed her elsewhere, but after watching her catch about 10 pitches, he knew she was the best catcher on the team. It became the turning point in the Cowgirls’ season.

She earned third-team All-American honors that season, and did the same the following season.

Earlier that season, Gajewski moved her from second base, where she played as a freshman, to the outfield — again, because of her “value” to the team.

“She was an unbelievable center fielder, to be very honest,” he said. “And she hated it, though, hated being in the outfield.”

She eventually moved from center field to catcher, but was still a bit unhappy she wasn’t able to stay at second base, he said.

She was determined to prove she was just as good as a star second baseman Gajewski had coached at Florida.

“She was trying to prove things to us that we didn’t need her to prove,” Gajewski said. “We already knew that she was a top 1 percent softball player. But it let me explain to her that she was just as good, or better. Once she heard that, it took the handcuffs off her, she could just play.”

This past season, she was a first-team All-American at third base.

“It’s abnormal for an All-American to play so many spots, and play them at such a high level,” Gajewski said.

Earlier in her senior year, Shippy joked with her coaches about pitching one game, just to say she’d started at every position. But they’d give her the brush-off.

Until late in the season. Against two-time defending national champion Oklahoma. On national TV.

“I didn’t know that I was going to be pitching that game,” she recalled. “I actually joked with them about starting against South Dakota the week before ... ‘No, I don’t think so, Vanessa.’ The next series, I look and my name’s on the starting lineup as the No. 1 (the position number for pitcher), and I was like, ‘We’re doing this now?’ I’ll pitch to Sydney Romero, one of the best hitters in the country? Sounds like a great idea.”

She pitched to Romero, gave up a base hit, and went back to third base.

It was the first time she’d pitched since high school, in a mop-up role. Before that, perhaps on a 10U team.

AFTER HER freshman season, Oklahoma State fired softball coach Rich Wieligman after his second straight losing season.

“When our other coach left, there was about a two-month period before we hired anybody,” Shippy recalled. “And that two-month period was definitely scary for me. I knew I wanted to be at OSU, and didn’t want to leave, but if this wasn’t someone who was going to come in and I wasn’t going to get along with, and have the same vision for growing the program, I wasn’t really sure how I was going to handle that.”

Eventually, OSU hired Gajewski, who was an assistant on Florida’s back-to-back national title teams in 2014 and ’15.

“So many people were telling me, ‘Coach Gajewski’s going to get the job, you should stick around, you’re going to love playing for him,’ and that’s exactly what I did.”

Gajewski knew a little bit about Shippy before taking the job. He knew other schools were interested in having her transfer there, but he was able to sell her on his vision for what he wanted the culture of Oklahoma State softball to look like.

“Her competitiveness is just crazy. She refuses to lose and she refuses to fail,” he said. “I think the biggest thing for us that we figured out pretty fast was, we needed to get out of her way. We needed to show her that making outs wasn’t the end of her life. I tell this to people all the time — we didn’t make Vanessa Shippy a good player, she was already really good. I think what we were able to help her do was kinda take the handcuffs off, and show her that she’s not identfied as a softball player, she’s identified as a really good person first. Softball is what she does; it’s not who she is. And I think when she got that through her hardheaded brain, it was like ‘Katy, bar the door.’ She was on a mission.”

SHIPPY LIKES to tell the story of competing in karate growing up, as well as playing softball.

One day, the story goes, as she became more accomplished at softball, her father, Ron, asked her to choose between softball and karate.

“Karate,” she said.

“OK, softball it is,” he said.

“My dad says ‘I hate that you tell everybody that story,’” Shippy said last week. “‘It’s a good story, dad.’”

“It makes me sound like I didn’t let you pick,” he told her.

“Dad, you didn’t let me pick,” she said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he replied.

“I don’t think I would have carried on karate, but who knows, I didn’t think I was going to carry on softball, and here I am ... ” Shippy said. “I played volleyball in high school and basketball in middle school, and I think there would have been other sports that would have taken over (instead of karate). Karate was just something that I did when I was really little, because, why not? I played every sport, played the violin ... ”

HER FIRST professional softball season completed, Shippy figured she’d be starting her career as a financial advisor. She graduated from OSU with a degree in finance and a degree in marketing, and a minor in accounting.

She passed her test to become a licensed financial advisor; she also has her life and health insurance license.

Then Gajewski told her Syracuse was looking for an assistant softball coach. She applied, interviewed and was hired.

“I love financial advising, I really do, but this opportunity to coach is something I could not pass up; this is a dream job,” Shippy said. “I could see myself doing it (financial advising) as a hobby. Investing really gets me excited, I really thought that was going to be the route that I went, but with coaching ... I guess it’s kind of a backup plan. I had a job doing that ... but now here I am.”

The coaching job in Syracuse will allow her to continue to play softball in the summers as well — something common among college assistants in certain sports.

Gajewski said he recommended Shippy to the Syracuse coach when he called. But he had to challenge him — and the coach had to challenge the athletic director — to take a chance on such a young coaching prospect. Usually at the college level, a coach that young has to volunteer for a year or two to prove themselves.

“She’s going to be an amazing coach,” Gajewski said. “Her work ethic is amazing, her knowledge is amazing, she has a keen sense of how to communicate with kids. She’s set up to be successful. She’s a beautiful person, she knows how to treat people, and in our game, there’s not enough of those. If she wants to coach, she’ll be a head coach in 5-6 years. No question.”

DURING HER senior year, Shippy said nearly every interview she did mentioned the consecutive games started streak — to the point where she thought she was being jinxed.

But the streak actually nearly ended late in her sophomore season.

“No one knew this, but I ended up on crutches for a couple days, right before regionals my sophomore year in Athens, Ga.,” she said. “I did something to my hip flexor. It wasn’t super serious ... but I couldn’t really walk, it was really painful. I couldn’t lift my leg at all.”

Just prior to regionals, “I was on my crutches going through the clubhouse and there were people doing interviews down toward the other end and my coach was like, ‘Get over there! Don’t let them see you.’ So I moved. And no one even knew, until after the season, in an interview the coach said, ‘We were down to one catcher, and she was about half a catcher.’ I was one move away from not being able to play.”

VANESSA AND Matt are scheduled to be married Saturday in Enid, Okla., about an hour from Stillwater. Then they’ll move to Syracuse, where the softball coach warned them about the harsh winters in upstate New York.

Shippy, who grew up in North Idaho, just laughed.

She said she and Matt will miss Stillwater.

“He impacted OSU so much, and I think everyone’s sad to see him go,” Shippy said.

Funny, that’s probably what a lot of people in Stillwater are saying about Vanessa Shippy as well.

“She will go down as one of the greatest players, if not the best player, to ever play here,” Gajewski said. “She’s still having an impact on this program, all the way from Syracuse.”