Blue Chip Commitment
Fall Signing Week '11: Top Recruit Hardebeck Chooses Stanford
by
Colette Lewis, 9 November 2011
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Blue chip recruit Krista Hardebeck has faced several tough choices in her life. A devoted piano student, she wasn't able to continue her quest for mastery of that instrument when she began to find success on the tennis court.
Choosing between
UCLA and
Stanford also proved difficult, with many of her close friends on the junior circuit urging her to join the Bruins. But in the end, what she calls her "lifelong dream" to play for Stanford won out, and she has signed a national letter of intent to compete for the Cardinal.
"I've always wanted to go to Stanford, since I was maybe 7 or 8," says Hardebeck, who turned 17 in September. "I was still pretty set on Stanford up until I took my UCLA visit, but I really liked UCLA, so I had a really big decision, a really tough one. But I remembered all the great things at Stanford, and I decided to choose them."
The Santa Ana, California resident, who is No. 1 in the Babolat Tennis Recruiting Network's Class of 2012 rankings, did her homework, drawing up a list of pros and cons for the schools she was considering, which also included Duke University.
"It included like 20 different reasons on both sides," says Hardebeck, who took her official visits to Stanford and UCLA in October, but did not make it to Durham. "I did a lot of thinking about it, talked to a lot of people, got a lot of input from how the girls themselves feel about what makes their school special. But after a while, it started coming down more to me. I was switching off every day, but I decided I wanted to go to Stanford still."
