Silverdale Baptist Academy softball player Allison Meadows, joined by her mother, Sharon, and father, Glen, signed a scholarship Tuesday to continue her athletic career at Lee University in Cleveland.
On Tuesday, Silverdale Baptist Academy softball star Allison Meadows took another major step in her athletic career – one almost cut short in a tragic 2013 stabbing incident in Pittsburgh – by signing a scholarship with Lee University in Cleveland.
“That’s not something you really never get over,” Meadows said at her signing ceremony at SBA, “because it’s always going to be there. You learn to live with it.”
And, she has.
The attack was an emotional part of Tuesday’s signing party, but didn’t overshadow Meadows’ moment in the spotlight and failed to derail the reason a crowd that packed a room at SBA came to celebrate with the diminutive student-athlete.
A year before the stabbing in a Target store in March 2013, Meadows, as a freshman, helped the Lady Seahawks reach the TSSAA state tournament final four and set two individual records in the process.
After the Lady Seahawks lost to Trinity Christian, Meadows collected five hits and scored five runs in a 12-9 win over Moore County for the records she shares with several other players in each category.
Now approaching her senior season and with the Pittsburgh trauma about to come to a head with a February trial of the man charged in the assault, Meadows, who plays center field, is geared to make the most of her final athletic season at SBA.
Meadows knows exactly how she wants to go out.
“I want to finish what we started my freshman year,” she said.
“That’s our ultimate goal, but right now we’re just thinking about winning some games and becoming a better team.”
SBA coach Tim Couch, who also has coached Meadows in select ball, acknowledges that a lot of the Lady Seahawks’ hopes of returning to the state tournament hinge on what his leadoff hitter can achieve this season.
“I expect her to be what she’s been the whole time; she leads by example and her play speaks volumes,” Couch said. “Her hand-eye coordination is excellent and even though she’s small, she’s strong. She works out a lot and has really good speed. The sky is the limit for Allison.”
In her three previous seasons, Meadows compiled a .461 batting average, currently the school record, a .527 on-base percentage, and 57 stolen bases, which are just five shy of Sloane Woodard’s school mark.
She has been selected to the All-District 5-A team three times and was named to the all-state team last season.
Once the upcoming season ends, Meadows will concentrate on taking her skills to Lee University where she will play for coach Emily Russell, who has a 484-191 record, posting 20-win seasons in all 12 years leading the Lady Flames program.
Lee competes in the NCAA Division II Gulf South Conference and had a 25-24 record in 2014.
Obviously, Meadows is thrilled with the opportunity to continue playing softball at Lee.
“My whole life I’ve played softball and I was really excited to finally find a college,” she said. “This has been a life-long dream to play softball in college. When I committed in January it represented all the hard work and dedication I’ve put into softball.”
Meadows said she considered East Tennessee State and a “few other schools” in the Chattanooga area as potential college destinations, but the final choice was clearly to accept the Lady Flames’ offer.
“The reason I picked Lee is because it’s really close to my friends and family and I also want to be at a Christian school where I can grow in Christ and live my dream of playing softball and got to college at the same time.”
Meadows started playing softball before her fifth birthday and began thinking way into the future while in middle school. She picked up select ball around the age of 10.
“I kept getting more and more competitive, softball was a lot of fun and I started thinking that I would like to do it later on in college and at the highest level possible,” she said.
Couch said Meadows needs to learn one thing before getting into the college game.
“She’s going to have to learn to compete,” Couch said. “There will be a bunch of players at Lee just like her. Allison is not afraid of competing, but the problem is she’s never had to compete for a position because she’s always been the best.
“Now, and every athlete goes through this, she will be going up against players with the same or better skills. She will have to compete for a job. She is one heck of a hitter with good speed. Those are her best assets, for sure.”
Those assets were almost taken from her in Pittsburgh.
Although the injuries sustained in the knife attack were non life-threatening, Meadows suffered a collapsed left lung and slashed right arm. She has lingering problems with her arm.
“I have to wrap my arm and keep compression on it most of the time, and I ice it after games,” Meadows said. “It’s hard to play because of that, but I love softball so much that I just going to keep pushing.”
SBA has a mission statement and Couch, who is also the school’s athletic director, spelled it out.
“We’re trying to build some Christ-like people here with some principles, character, discipline, toughness and discipleship,” he said, “and she’s done all those things. As a senior, she is the face of our softball program.”
Remember the “toughness” portion of the school’s mission statement?
That’s another example of Meadows’ strong inner-self.
Doctors told the Meadows family that Allison could return to softball, but the recuperation period from the injuries and subsequent surgery would be at least four weeks.
She returned to the diamond about two weeks later.
“For her to come back in the time she did, with the attitude and determination, says a lot about her,” Couch said. “I don’t know many people that have been through an event like that come back and be the same person.”
Perhaps the most stressful part of the off- field ordeal is fast approaching for Meadows.
It’s the scheduled Feb. 10 preliminary hearing for Leon Walls, the knife-wielding attacker who, according to published reports out of Pittsburgh, grabbed Meadows as a hostage and then stabbed her twice.
In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article by Liz Navratil, the bearded Walls had a “criminal history” that stretched across the country and included “aiding in a robbery” that led to a woman’s death.
Walls also served a sentence for voluntary manslaughter and robbery at Mule Creek State Prison between July 1991 and June 1999, according to Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The newspaper story went on to point out that Walls and another man were initially charged with murdering Hilda Blackburn and robbing her and a man named Louis Roldan. The murder charge was later downgraded.
When Walls, who was homeless when he attacked Meadows and others in the East Liberty Target store, was arrested in Pittsburgh, the story continued, Walls was wanted by the U.S. Marshals Service on “a probation violation stemming from an assault” in Washington, D.C.
In addition to the stabbing charge, prosecutors in June added additional counts of attempted homicide, aggravated assault, terroristic threats and false imprisonment against Walls.
“I’m not exactly looking forward to it,” Allison said, “but it’s one of those things. It happened and God brought me through it. God will be with me again.”
(E-mail Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @larryfleming44)