With mom Jen at her side, Marley van den Burg (right) has a relaxed glow after completing her last day of high school career.
New Blair High School alum Marley van den Burg’s rich life of sports, music – and baking – heads for a new exiting chapter.
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU STAFF WRITER
There’s a quiet intensity about Marley van den Burg, usually most apparent when she steps into the batter’s box.
“I don’t really think about much when I’m there,” she said in her customary quiet voice. “Just hit.”
Just graduated from Blair High School in Pasadena, van den Burg was an anchor of the softball program all four of her years at the school, holding down the starting spot and first base and usually a cleanup hitter.
Having played the game since the age of 8 with an elite club team in Sierra Madre, softball has been a defining characteristic for her. For her senior season at Blair, however, the story took an unexpected – and disheartening – turn.
“I tore my ACL while skiing over spring break last in Banff, Canada,” she explained. Surgery to repair the knee meant no running, no pressure and certainly no softball for at least a year.
This past season, van den Burg could still be seen out on the softball field, but in a coaching and development role. It was a way to continue to offer something to the program, albeit at a school hardly considered an athletics powerhouse.
“Coaching is not easy, especially at a school not known for sports,” she admitted.
In addition to ensuring school credit earned from participating in a varsity sport, she has also enjoyed a valuable rapport with her coach, who this past year was her history teacher within the International Baccalaureate program offered at Blair.
Still, on a few occasions, she could be spotted looking somewhat forlorn as her teammates took the field. Some athletes might push to rush their recovery and rehabilitation for a major surgery, but that wasn’t happening for van den Burg – especially given that her father, Brian, is a doctor of internal medicine.
“Everyone said no,” she said dryly.
Serving as a kind of salve on the disappointment has been van den Burg’s other passion pursuit: music. For the past 13 years, she has played classical guitar with the Pasadena Conservatory of Music, where she gave her senior recital last month. Her younger brother, Kenji, also plays guitar with the PCM.
Although beginning music classes came at the strong suggestion of her mother, Jen, van den Burg said she truly enjoys certain aspects of taking a guitar in hand.
“I like to play faster pieces that have a lot of scales and arpeggios, a lot of moving notes,” she said.
In the midst of finals and the excitement of graduating, Marley still had to focus on her senior recital at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music in May.
“With guitar, young students are more likely to continue as an adult,” Jen reasoned. “She was always pretty good about playing and practicing on her own, and the teacher is fun. She’s been playing guitar for so long that she doesn’t get nervous when performing.”
This month, Marley completed her high school studies with a sparkling 4.7 grade point average and earning an International Baccalaureate Diploma. Developed in Switzerland in the 1960s, the program is recognized in more than 140 countries around the world and is renowned for preparing students for top university admission.
Before her next big chapter opens, she’ll be busy this summer working at a counselor at the famed Tom Sawyer Camps, a nearly 100-year-old program of outdoor activities held each year in the Hahamongna Watershed north of Pasadena.
There’s also some baking to be done. Marley is an avid baker, with sourdough bread as her speciality. The starter that lives in her fridge at home is known around the house as “her baby,” according to Jen.
When the fall rolls around, she’ll find herself at UC San Diego, where she plans to major in cinematography. She cited the recent iterations of Batman as being among her favorite movies.
Like most things around her, the prospect of leaving home doesn’t seem to faze her. While her parents both have family ties to Hawaii, Marley said from the out-set, she wanted to stay in state.
“The one thing I most need to watch out for is procrastination,” she said of going away to college.
Like the loaves of dough at home, life for Marley is most certainly on the rise.