Fa Leilua called first.
After Mississippi State softball coach Samantha Ricketts announced in her team’s GroupMe that the Bulldogs would each be able to apply for an extra year of collegiate eligibility due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, excitement, happiness and celebratory GIFs ensued. Then Ricketts received a call.
Leilua was in. She’d already resolved to take the extra year — her sixth year of college and her fifth season playing softball — and she already had questions for Ricketts about the options she had for her master’s program in coaching.
“It was just such a cool conversation because Fa said, ‘This was something I never thought was possible,'” Ricketts recalled. “‘I never in a million years thought that I would have an opportunity to get a master’s degree.’ She was genuinely excited about school and about the possibilities in front of her.”
Leilua — a first-generation college graduate as of May 1 — said she had no doubt about coming back for 2021.
“I was definitely excited about taking one last ride with my seniors,” Leilua said. “It’s just the idea of having another year with the same group of girls.”
By a month later, when Ricketts reconvened her five seniors to garner a final decision on whether they’d be back, three more Bulldogs had joined Leilua to take an extra season. Outfielder and pitcher Candace Denis, pitcher Alyssa Loza and outfielder Christian Quinn will all be back next year, as Mississippi State returns nearly all its talent from a 25-3 season that left the Bulldogs wondering what could have been.
“This team is really special, and being able to have mostly everybody coming back and getting to play that one more extra year with them, it’s something that I’m looking forward to,” Loza said.
Infielder Lindsey Williams was the only one of Mississippi State’s five seniors to decide she wouldn’t play one more year with the team, leaving the Bulldogs sad for her departure but glad most of their senior class is returning for 2021.
“You always say, ‘Oh, you’ll never play with the same team again,’ but at least you kind of do now,” Quinn said.
Off to the best start in school history, the Bulldogs saw their season halted one day before the start of Southeastern Conference play. That, Denis said, “really just breaks you down.”
“We already knew we were really good, and things were really starting to head uphill,” she said. “Then you think about just exactly how good we were — one of the only teams with 25 wins — and things like that really start to creep on you.”
Seeking a minor in creative writing, Denis already planned to stay in school for one or two more semesters, so when she heard the news that she’d get another season to play softball, she felt like things “fell into place.”
But she pointed out that receiving the extra year of eligibility can’t fully make up for the loss the Bulldogs felt when their season was taken from them.
“You don’t just get that back,” Denis said. “I mean, yeah, we’re returning everybody, but it was just obviously disheartening for all that to come to a grinding halt and just feel like all the work up until that point had been wasted — which, of course, any work put in is never wasted, but how are you supposed to get all 30 girls to feel that way in that moment? It was crushing, to say the least.”
Loza, who transferred to Starkville from Arizona State before the 2019 season, said being able to play another year did offer her some solace.
“Hearing the news of getting another year back, I was super grateful for that opportunity,” she said. “I’m able to go out on my own terms instead of ending it the way it did.”
She consulted with her roommates, Leilua — the two played together at Arizona State before transferring to MSU — and Sarai Niu, also a former fifth-year senior. Together, Loza and Leilua — both Southern California natives — decided their softball career together would continue at least one more spring.
“Being able to start with her and finish with her has definitely been a great experience,” Loza said of Leilua.
Denis said the four seniors’ decisions to play an extra season replaced the team’s dour mood after the season was ended with a more light-hearted atmosphere.
“It didn’t feel as scary anymore,” Denis said. “That’s not to say it took all the pressure away for everyone to make their decisions, but it definitely felt a lot better to finally have an answer as to what could happen for ourselves and that we were able to decide that for ourselves.”
Ricketts said the seniors, knowing they’ll be back, have taken it upon themselves of late to push the team’s underclassmen to step into bigger roles — a positive byproduct of the NCAA’s decision to preserve eligibility for spring athletes.
“‘Yeah, I’m here one more year,'” Ricketts recalled her seniors saying. “‘You’re here four more years; why don’t you speak up?'”
Freshmen Kylie Taylor, Taylor Middlebrook and Addison Purvis and College of San Mateo transfer Shea Moreno are set to join the team next season, so that mindset grows more important as the Bulldogs look forward to a skilled — yet full — roster.
“It’s only gonna make it more fun to compete at practice because then we all just continue to make each other better,” Denis said. “Age and class kind of dissipates with that. We’re all doing something we enjoy and working together as a team to get really good.”
With such a talented roster at her disposal, Ricketts said she sees the 2021 season as a “next step” — rather than just “starting over” — after the successful yet shortened 2020 campaign.
“We think that if we can really continue what we’re doing and find a way to push it to another level — especially mentally and with that confidence piece — we can probably do some pretty special things,” Ricketts said.
Ricketts noted that her players’ gratitude for being able to get their senior season back plays into that, too.
“We talk a lot about, ‘The game can be taken from you at any moment,’ and it was for not just this team but every team across the country,” she said. “I think they’re very thankful and they realize just how blessed they are with the opportunity to be able to do this, and now to be able to have that year back is just gonna make them even more appreciative to the days — the good and the bad — that we have out there together.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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