The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Madison standout commits
Blue Streaks’ Lavdis will continue career at Tennessee-Chattanooga
Whoever is tired of getting struck out and dominated by Alyssa Lavdis in softball can blame Lavdis’ sister, Alexis.
If not for following “big sister” Alexis, Alyssa Lavdis might be one of the area’s top gymnasts and not a high-profile softball player who recently accepted a Division I athletic scholarship to Tennessee-Chattanooga.
“My sister got me into softball,” the soft-spoken, yet highly competitive, rising senior at Madison said. “I originally did gymnastics. But I was always there watching my sister’s softball tournaments. I figured, ‘I’m always here. I might as well give it a try.’”
Only a handful of years have passed since then — seven of them to be exact — but in that short period of time, Lavdis has become one of the area’s most dominating players.
For her efforts, she has committed to Tennessee-Chattanooga. She chose the Mocs over offers from Miami (Ohio), Valparaiso, Indiana, Marshall and Northern Illlinois, among others who expressed interest. Lavdis plans to major in Kinesiology.
“The campus and the coaches,” Lavdis said on what sold her on Tennessee-Chattanooga. “When I visited there, it was such a great atmosphere. It wasn’t about softball. It was about academics along with softball. They wanted to know about me and my family. They were more involved with who I was as a person, and that meant a lot to me.”
Tennessee-Chattanooga finished 7-14 this past spring before COVID-19 halted the season.
Lavdis will take with her to the Volunteer State a vast arsenal of pitches, including a fastball that is around 61-62 mph, a changeup, dropcurve, rise and her patented screwball.
“The screwball is probably my best,” she said.
“If I can throw it low and inside, it jams the batter up. That’s a hard pitch to hit.”
Lavdis chuckled thinking back to her early days on the softball diamond, joining the Grand River Styx as a first-time player when she was 10. She gave pitching a try her first year, but then moved to a different team — the SunDogs, out of Elyria — her second year and wound up at catcher.
“They already had three pitchers,” Lavdis said of the SunDogs. “I tried catching, and I ended up being pretty good at it. We were ninth at the nationals in Tennessee that year.”
But soon Lavdis went back to the pitcher’s circle and has been there ever since.
Her junior season with the Blue Streaks was wiped out by the novel coronavirus, but as a sophomore — her first with Madison — she went 8-2 with an areabest 135 strikeouts despite sitting out the second half of the season because of the OHSAA’s transfer rules.
Lavdis played her freshman year at Walsh Jesuit.
“I missed a year playing with my sister,” she said. “But I’m glad to be back at Madison with all
my friends now. I felt like I wanted to prove something at Madison.”
While her junior season, and that of every softball team in the state, was wiped out by the coronavirus, Lavdis is back to action in summer ball as a member of the Ohio Hawks, a program based out of Cincinnati. She travels to Cincinnati on Saturdays for practice when they don’t have games.
Through the early going, and with plenty of games and tournaments yet to be played, she is hitting .430 with four home runs and a .489 slugging percentage for the Ohio Hawks. Pitching-wise, she has a 1.30 ERA and 1.1 WHIP, with 28 strikeouts in 34 innings.
“It was really hard missing the high school season,” she said. “We had a lot of seniors and were looking forward to doing something big this year.”
The lost 2020 season just accentuates the importance on 2021, which will be her senior year.
“I think we can have a big year,” she said. “I think we’re going to be good. We had two freshmen this year — Emily Blackie and Alexis Nicholson — who I was looking forward to playing with. I think we can make a real run at the district next year.”