Dani Laughlin’s path to Texas began 13 months ago in something called the ProspectWire Bombers Exposure Weekend.

Simply put, it was a club softball tournament.

The weekend featured premier clubs from around the nation playing games in College Station, Texas, and doing so in front of college softball coaches looking to recruit the next Jenny Finch.

And that’s exactly how a girl from Riverside, Iowa, got noticed.

Among that sea of coaches was somebody from Texas State, a growing and successful NCAA DI program that exists in the shadows of the University of Texas, a six-time College World Series participant, and will face the Longhorns in March.

They liked what they saw from Laughlin, who has been playing for Des Moines-based Iowa Premier Fastpitch teams since she was 14 years old and at that point in 2021 was a junior at Highland High School.

“They saw me there and they reached out,” Laughlin said. “Because otherwise, I hadn’t gone to a camp.”

Soon, one October trip to Texas, covering about 1,000 miles one way from Riverside, became several trips to Texas.

Laughlin, who is now a senior at Regina Catholic High School in Iowa City, proudly signed a letter-of-intent with Texas State during a Nov. 9 ceremony held in Regina’s indoor practice facility. Her teammates cheered. And sitting at the signing table wearing Texas State shirts were her mom, Vera Schaack, and dad, Bill Laughlin.

Dani Laughlin couldn’t stop smiling.

Talk about a Texas dream.

“I love the campus,” she said. “You’ve got to think like you’re not only playing softball, you’re going to school there. The campus is just amazing.”

Texas State’s coaches didn’t take long to figure out they wanted this girl from Iowa playing in San Marcos, Texas, which checks in at 1,001.5 miles from tiny downtown Riverside. The Bobcats won 38 games and reached the Sun Belt championship game last season and head coach Ricci Woodard has won 762 games in her 22 years at Texas State.

“The coaches there, the coaching staff, great,” Dani Laughlin said. “I got to spend a lot of time with the girls that are already playing down there, they were just great. Teammates are such a big thing. I love it down there.”

Between those Texas trips and club softball tournaments, Laughlin had a team-leading .500 batting average last summer for Regina in a state-championship season for the Regals.

“I really enjoyed it this past summer,” she said. “It was such a blast.”

As a freshman at Highland in 2020, she hit .600. She’ll likely start in the outfield for the Bobcats.

All of this started years ago in Riverside, where Dani played on the Explosions softball team as a young girl and her passion for the game began early.

“Even at a young age, she was always pushing herself and us to get better,” said Bill Laughlin. “It was always, ‘One more hit, dad’ or ‘throw me one more pop fly.’ And if I wasn’t available, she’d rope her older brothers into getting in the yard with her.”

Laughlin plans on playing basketball and softball to finish out her senior year at Regina, and then she’s headed south for the land of big-time college softball and Big Tex and the Dallas Cowboys.

“I didn’t want to go to a very large campus, like spread out,” she said. “The campus down there is really like compact, but it’s not just like tiny. So I really like that. Everything’s in walking distance, our dorms that we’ll be in, walking distance to the field and my classes. It kind of has an older vibe because all the buildings are original Texas State. I think that’s really cool.”

But not tiny at all. Texas State University’s enrollment hit more than 33,000 in 2021. The school’s alums include former President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Bobcats compete in the Sun Belt Conference, but also take on Texas and Baylor of the Big 12 and Texas A&M of the SEC.

“I think it’s really cool that we’re competing with those bigger DI schools,” Laughlin said. “The softball coach (Woodard), she schedules teams like Texas, Baylor. I think it’s really cool we don’t shy away from that.”

For Laughlin, it all started with a fall trip to a Texas softball tournament. Without that?

“If I wouldn’t have been down there, they wouldn’t have seen me,” Dani said. “I’m very blessed to be able to do that.”

And that’s the lesson here. Take a chance.

If Dani was speaking to some young softballers in Riverside today, here’s what she’d say: “I’d probably tell them, if you have a dream, pursue it. Because if you don’t pursue it, no one else is going to do it for you. You put in the work, you’ll get stuff, you know?”

In this case, Texas stuff.

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul.