Adara Opiola never fully embraced her Latin heritage before she came to UNI. She didn't talk about her ethnicity much, and it was easy not to talk about it in a sport like softball because she wasn't around a lot of minorities while playing the sport in high school and travel ball.
"I tried to build a comfort zone of pretending to be like everyone else," she said. "My comfort zone ended up being a barrier. I always felt I couldn't be myself."
She grew up in Iowa City. In the midwest, softball tends to be a less diverse sport than other areas of the country.