For colleges that request/require 4 years of a FL, I am not aware of any instance where it is anything other than 4 years of the same language. Only completing level one is, IMO, just a waste of a class; one won’t learn enough to make it meaningful.
As others have said, complete of level 4, regardless of how many years taken in HS, almost always meets the requirement.
As an FYI, without knowing why she hated Spanish, I will say she probably won’t like Italian more. And unless one is totally interested in Italian culture, learning Italian (certainly as compared to Spanish) is pretty useless for a US resident, and sadly, I say this as a fluent speaker of Italian. 