If choosing a college is like choosing a second home, Savanna Brooks did not have to travel far to find hers.
Just 10 minutes down the road from her childhood home is Wingate, a private Division II school in western North Carolina. As a child, Brooks went to all kinds of Bulldog sporting events — softball games were her favorite.
One of the team's best players at the time was Alexis Burrell. After her senior season in 2015, the shortstop finished her career as the program's all-time leader in home runs and is now second on the list.
Today, Brooks sits atop the list.
"It's kind of crazy that I grew up watching her and then I got to pass her record," said Brooks, who finished her career this spring with 60 home runs. "She's the one who inspired me to play."
In addition to the home run record, Brooks is Wingate's all-time leader in RBIs, total bases, slugging percentage and runs scored. During her senior season, she was the active NCAA Division II leader in RBIs and total bases.
Though Brooks was able to accomplish several athletic feats in her career, her accomplishments off the field and the impact she made on the people around her are what she will be remembered for.
But it all started with figuring out a career path, which did not come easily to Brooks. As a three-sport high school athlete playing volleyball, basketball and softball, sports had become a vital part of her everyday life. She knew she wanted to do something that kept her around sports and on her feet. But it wasn't until a season-ending knee injury forced her off her feet her senior year of high school and she started rehab that she identified a potential career: physical therapy.
"They didn't just rehab my knee and say, 'Oh, let's get you back to being average,'" Brooks said. "They had me do full-body workouts and all that to get me above where I left from."
The healing process was both a physical and mental journey for Brooks, but she had a strong support system, including her physical therapists, helping her at every step. Brooks decided to major in exercise science with the goal of becoming a licensed physical therapist one day.
"I wanted to help people like they helped me," she said.
At Wingate, Brooks took her studies seriously. With a full academic and athletic calendar, she quickly learned the importance of time management and communication with her coaches and professors. She credits the structure of Division II for empowering her to give an ample amount of time to both of her demanding schedules.
"Let's say I did have a class that kind of leaked into the practice time where most people could come," Brooks said. "It wasn't like the end of the world. You just come and jump in, get to work from there."
This support allowed Brooks to finish her bachelor's degree in three years and jump into a master's program in sports management during her final year of eligibility.
She was a College Sports Communicators Academic All-America first-team selection three times, becoming just the second student-athlete at Wingate to earn that distinction. Brooks was also recognized by the South Atlantic Conference with the 2024-25 President's Award, the league's highest honor for a student-athlete. She became the first Wingate softball student-athlete to win the award.
Earning those titles was not easy, especially during her senior year, when she tagged on an internship with Wingate's sports performance department to her already busy schedule.
"That was a lot of waking up early," Brooks said, with a laugh.
"I was in the weight room at 5:30 a.m. every single morning, even when we didn't have lifts. So that was a hard semester, to say the least. But I learned a lot about coaching, how your body moves, meeting goals and how to modify them to the athletes and to the sport."
On the days when finding motivation was hard, Brooks leaned on her two biggest support systems: her faith and her teammates. That is whom she credits for all her individual accolades.
"I just point all the glory back to the one who gave me the talent, gave me the opportunity to play at Wingate," Brooks said. "I try to make it not about me. It's about giving the glory back to God because he's the one who's blessed me with this opportunity. And same with my teammates … (softball) is a team sport."
Head coach Jamie Stanclift, who started at Wingate in 2019, witnessed firsthand the way her star player impacted the team on and off the field.
"When I came on campus to Wingate for my interview, I just felt immediately that that's where God wanted me to be," Stanclift said. "I knew eventually I would find out why, and I think that Savanna was a huge part of that."
Even as a freshman, Brooks awed Stanclift with her poise and unwavering focus, relying on her teammates and her faith to guide her, allowing her to just enjoy the game she has loved all her life. While she might not have always been the prototypical vocal leader in the locker room, Brooks always set the right example with her actions. This validated to Stanclift that she was in the right place.
"I just felt very inspired, and that encouraged me to continue to grow in my faith personally, but also to have the confidence to talk about that within our program and not avoid that topic with our student-athletes and to allow them to have opportunities to talk about their walk with God … and grow in their faith through the work of our team and our family," Stanclift said.
The following summer, as Stanclift thought about mantras for the team to rally around, "44" —"ForHim andForHer" — was born.
"It's just a reminder of why we do what we do and who we play for," Stanclift explained. "We play for him, and we play for the girl next to us and that little girl that is looking up to us and for the women that came before us and were the trailblazers for us, and so (it's) all about just reminding ourselves that it's much bigger than (us)."
Stanclift shared the mantra with Brooks first, who immediately had ideas on how to get the whole team invested.
"I just let her take it from there and run with it," Stanclift said. "So it was definitely teamwork, and she probably doesn't know that it truly all started with her."
To honor the role that Brooks played in creating "44," this past season she was awarded the inaugural Savanna Brooks 44 award, an end-of-the-year team honor created to recognize the student-athlete who best embodies the team motto.
Now that Brooks has finished playing, with plans to attend physical therapy school at Wingate in January, her teammates are already mapping out how to keep the traditions that she started going and inspiring the next generation along the way.
"(Savanna)'s a little girl that grew up in our community and grew up watching Wingate softball and coming to Wingate softball camps," Stanclift said. "And now she's going to have little ones following in her footsteps that want to come through and be a part of our program because they saw her do it and want to leave a mark on our program the way that she has."