Canberra baseball player Kai Cooper-Vassalakis always knew he was going to play at a United States university - he has spent his whole life working for it.
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It took about a week to decide as the scholarship offers came flowing in and now Cooper-Vassalakis is preparing to join the University of Northwestern Ohio Racers midway through 2017.
It is the perfect Christmas present for a baseball-mad youngster - the offers came before he had technically graduated at Canberra College.
Cooper-Vassalakis admits he doesn't know a whole lot about the university's baseball program, except the Racers are a part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.
NAIA consists of 300 schools and 13 sports and is a smaller association than the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
It includes two divisions (division I and II) - division I in the NAIA is comparable to division II in the NCAA.
Thirty-nine players from NAIA schools were taken in the 2016 Major League Baseball draft, and that is where Cooper-Vassalakis hopes to be in four years.
"The final goal is Major League, but if that doesn't work out then that doesn't work," Cooper-Vassalakis said.
"Honestly I sort of expected I was going to go to college. I was obviously working hard because I wanted to get there.
"But at the same time I sort of expected to get there because all the boys before me in the academy program had gone to college over there.
"It was more about trying to get to a top college. You sort of knew you were going to get to college over there but it was more about what kind of college you were going to go to."
Cooper-Vassalakis is now too old for junior representative sides, so he has been hitting the gym five times a week and training himself in the backyard.
The Weston Creek Indians product splits his time between right-field, left-field and first base and was rapt the Racers staff decided to "take a punt" on a teenager from Canberra.
Cooper-Vassalakis will play in America for the fourth time in June for a baseball showcase event before moving on to university.
Cooper-Vassalakis's 15-year-old brother Brodie became the youngest player in Australian Baseball League history when he made his debut for the Canberra Cavalry in November.
