About Maggie Bailey

Maggie Bailey grew up on a hobby farm outside Gallatin, Missouri — the kind of place where you learn to work hard because the work is always there. Sheep, horses, dogs, and a lot of early mornings. Her teammates at the University of Wisconsin would call her "Farmer Mag." She considered it a compliment.

She went on to play Division I softball at Wisconsin-Madison, where she spent four years as a catcher — earning a Big Ten Championship in 2013, the Defensive Player of the Year award in 2012, and finishing her career with 740 putouts and a .980 fielding percentage. After graduation, she played professionally in Barcelona, Spain.

When her playing days ended, she went deeper into the sport. After earning her Master's in College Student Counseling from Arkansas Tech, she built a career inside D1 athletic departments — as a Softball Academic Advisor at Arkansas Tech, a Student-Athlete Development Specialist at Texas State, and across her full administrative career has worked with over 1,700 students, and finally as Associate Athletic Director and Senior Woman Administrator at UA Little Rock, overseeing 13 D1 programs and directing NCAA compliance, eligibility, and Title IX for over six years.

She was in the rooms where recruiting decisions get made. She knows how coaches evaluate recruits when families aren't listening. She knows what raises a red flag, what seals a deal, and what quietly removes a name from the list.

Then she became a mom. And that changed her perspective entirely.

She founded Elite Student Advisors to give families access to what she knows — not a platform, not a subscription, but one advisor who has been inside the institutions that will evaluate your student, working directly with your family from start to finish. Maggie brings structure, clarity, and honesty to every family she works with.