Jordyn Breitbarth has been getting a geography lesson all her life, so it was no surprise that she ended up in Minnesota for college.
The 2014 Hilo High graduate is playing softball and soccer at Dakota County Tech, a junior college in Rosemount, Minn., about 30 minutes from Minneapolis.
She and her family — parents Brian and Lori Breitbarth and younger brothers Josh and Jyson — take a summer trip to the mainland every other year.
They’ve been to 26 states, and had a blast in 2010, when they visited the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Mount Rushmore.
Breitbarth’s parents are from Iowa. The family landed in Las Vegas, drove to Arizona, Wyoming and then to South Dakota.
The Breitbarth caravan visited the folks in Iowa, drove back to Vegas, and flew to Hilo.
At Dakota Tech, it snowed for the first time on Monday, when Breitbarth, who has a 3.5 grade-point average and is majoring in kinesiology, made her first snowman.
The soccer season recently finished and the Blue Knights went 7-9-2. At goalie, Breitbarth posted five shutouts.
In the playoffs, Dakota Tech won its first-round game, but fell to No. 1 Iowa Western in the next game.
She’s got a part-time job at Papa John’s and when she isn’t working or studying, Breitbarth is conditioning with the Dakota Tech softball team, which starts its season in March.
And to show that aloha is never far from home, two other 2014 Hilo grads are also attending college in the Minnesota.
Carmen Garson-Shumway is running cross country, and track at Macalester College in Minneapolis, and Lolly Higa is playing soccer at Hamline University in Saint Paul. Both Division III schools are in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
The trio went to the Minnesota State Festival in September and ate the fair’s staple food, deep-friend pickles.
“It tasted pretty good,” Jordyn said. “It’s like a combination of tempura and a mozzarella stick.”