Alyssa Davis' 2017 Premier Preps photo

Forced the stay indoors for the foreseeable future, Alyssa Davis is trying to stay on track.

Attempting to build on last season when the Southern Miss softball team reached the Conference USA postseason but crashed out in the opening round, the junior infielder and her Golden Eagle teammates were looking to make a deeper playoff run this spring. 

They’ll never truly know their potential, however, as their 2020 season concluded less than two months before the conference playoffs were set to begin when the NCAA canceled all spring sports last month in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Davis said her squad shared their disbelief in a group message. 

“It was one of those speechless moments, like is this really happening? There’s no way. I can’t believe it,” she said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing where they completely shut down every sport.”

A 2017 Philadelphia High School graduate and member of The Meridian Star’s Premier Preps fast-pitch team, Davis was off to a promising start this season, batting .254 in 22 games started with 16 hits, 13 runs and 19 RBIs. Now back in Philadelphia, she’s been attending online classes and doing workouts from home, which she said have been limiting without the full use of gyms, which are closed indefinitely. She’s been getting alternative workout routines from her strength coach, she added, such as filling a backpack with weight and using it as a dumbbell. 

“I’m getting in workouts where I can because you can’t really go anywhere. You’ve got to do it at home,” she said. “You won’t be fully in shape with it, but it’s something to help maintain your fitness.”

Davis also said she’s been receiving encouraging text messages from her head coach on a daily basis, telling her to stay focused, remain positive and maintain a winning attitude. 

“He texts us every day and tells us to be a champion. They’re motivational things to help keep us going,” she said. “It’s easy to lose that mindset right now because nothing’s going on.”

Southern Miss started 14-8 before its 2020 campaign was cut short, and while Davis said she wants her and her team to be able to get right back into the swing of things in 2021 — the NCAA announced last week student-athletes in spring sports will not be charged a year a of eligibility — she knows how different the Golden Eagles will look.

“I would hope for us to pick up where we started, but that’s not going to happen because we’ve got six or seven freshmen coming in,” she said. “We don’t know where we would’ve ended, so it’s like we’re rebuilding off of where we ended.”

This story is part of The Meridian Star’s ongoing series “Sidelined Standouts,” covering college athletes from the local area during the coronavirus outbreak.