Few Sedona Red Rock High School athletes have built up the resume that Annabelle Cook has in her junior year.

Her 2021-2022 school year has seen her become a star player in three sports — soccer, basketball and softball — and blossom into one of the top ranks academically in her class. Cook now has another notch on her list of athletic and academic accomplishments.

This week she committed to play both basketball and softball at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota beginning in the fall semester of 2023.

Cook’s recruitment opened at the start of her junior year in September, a process she described as “rough” with a lot of late nights and conversations with coaches across the country.

“I’m Surrounded by empowered women. And I want to be an empowered woman.”

– Annabelle Cook

When she began reaching out to coaches and sending her tape out, she didn’t email anyone in Arizona, California or a bunch of other nearby states. She wanted to travel outside of her comfort zone of Northern Arizona.

“I wanted to go somewhere where I was a commodity. You don’t find a lot of small, Hispanic shortstops everywhere,” she laughed. “Or a small, fast point guard, so I wanted to find somewhere where I’d be new.”

A recent trip to campus made the convoluted thoughts suddenly clear up. While experiencing her first ever snowy softball game, which she watched during her recruiting visit, she knew the journey to St. Paul would be different from anything else she’s experienced before.

“It kind of came down to the fact that when I went to visit [St. Catherine], it checked every box,” she said. “It’s a high academic, it’s a good community, it’s basketball and softball — two competitive teams — and they’re allowing me to do pre-med which a lot of schools didn’t allow me to do.”

Sedona athletic director and softball head coach Pedro Ortega says St. Catherine is getting a star on the field and in the classroom.

“She’s a great ambassador,” he said. “She plays the sport like she’s enjoying life … She has everything you need as a coach to be proud of her. I’m so proud of her journey and she deserves everything she’s getting.”

Dual-sport athletes are incredibly rare at the collegiate level, and that’s one of the reason St. Catherine stood out to Cook. “St. Kate’s,” as it’s referred to for short, competes in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference at the NCAA Division III level.

“I did have a few other dual offers, but when it came down to it both of my coaches were willing to work with me,” she said. “It was just the support system that drew me there. As well as the competitiveness, because I want to win.”

Two college sports is a heavy workload, but Cook’s decision was based more on academics than anything else.

She’s going to major in biochemisty pre-med, saying an AP-biology class she took at Sedona Red Rock made it clear what she wanted to do in college.

St. Catherine is a high-ranking academic school and for bachelor programs, is women’s only. That was a selling point to the 17-year old athlete from the Verde Valley.

“I had no issue going to an all-women’s university,” Cook said. “I’m surrounded by empowered women. And I want to be an empowered woman.”