Last week, Savannah Fisher, an outfielder/shortstop from Missouri, was one of hundreds of seniors who signed a Letter of Intent. Savannah is headed to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in Edwardsville, Ill., but her journey hit a serious speedbump when a basketball injury threatened to derail a stellar softball future.

Below you’ll read about Savannah’s story as told by her mother, Jennifer, who says: “Yes, I am her mom and I may be partial, but her story does need to get out for other athletes who feel like Savannah did and face overcoming doubts and injuries.”

Here is Savannah’s triumphant story told in a way only a mother can recap it!

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Well, it all started when Savannah picked up a bat at age six and we were in Florida.

Savannah tried soccer and cheerleading and that was a no-go.  She was always the bigger (taller) kid and coaches always loved that. She started her first travel team at age eight and was awkward and just clumsy.

Some of the moms called her “Baby Giraffe” because of how awkward she was but everyone always said she would grow into her body and to just give her time.

The first travel team she was on was called the Caloosa Park Cubs.  The moms on the team wanted our girls to look good because we knew they would probably be terrible on the field so they had matching bat bags, helmets and embroidered jackets.  They looked good!

They had their first tournament and they were amazing and went on to win a lot of games and not only grew as a team but grew as friends. Three of her teammates, in fact, will play D1 ball.

Savannah was the catcher because she would get distracted in the outfield! She could throw people out at second and was a natural when it came to hitting but she was still awkward because of her size.

Well, we moved to Missouri and the softball game was much different there.  She was in shock because her 10U team in Florida was like a 16U team in Missouri—a huge difference but in Florida you play all year around. Savannah tried out for a team in our town and fit right in as she was able to slap, hit for power and catch and throw girls out at second.

The team was called Hallsville Blaze and played 10U during the fall season.  During games I would hear coaches ask about her because she was more advanced than most of the other girls her age.  We as parents were a little in shock coming from Florida where she was that awkward “baby giraffe” and now coaches were actually wanting to know about her.

Savannah played with that team for the season and then tried out for Mo Thunder.  That team was a huge turn-around in her softball career.

The team was started when she was in fifth grade and the whole team except one athlete is playing college ball already or will next year!

They traveled all over and won so many tournaments in the Midwest.  Savannah hit her first home run the fall travel season of her seventh grade year in Kansas City and after that she was known for her hard-hitting style.  That team disbanded after two years but Greg Logsdon, who believed in Savannah, decided to take six players from Mo Thunder and make a team called MO Stealth.

Through this team, Savannah became very close to Rhea Taylor, the USA National Team member and Missouri All-American. Savannah worked hard to become a slapper because she has 2.68 speed home-to-first and what better person than Rhea to teach her?

Savannah continued to work with Rhea and became the only freshman to start varsity that year as she played centerfield where she had been moved to use her speed in the outfield.

The first game of her freshman year Savannah hit a walk-off grand slam and would hit eight more and lead the team in home runs and batting average. She received letters from Wisconsin, Southern Illinois-Carbondale, Missouri-St. Louis, Texas Southern and was on the watch list for Missouri.

She was All-District, All-Conference and All-Region that year and was the team’s Offensive MVP.

Savannah also played basketball and helped the varsity team finish 3rd in the State.  In track she was All-Conference and All-District in the 100 and 200 meters and  All-Sectional in the 100 which she qualified for state as well.

She decided after her freshman year to not play basketball and went to her coach and told him that she wanted to focus on softball. Savannah played all summer with Mo Stealth and traveled to Colorado, Chicago and other places that summer.

For her sophomore year she was 1st Team All-State, All District, All Conference and All-Region as she hit six home runs and lead the team again in batting average.

Following the softball season, the basketball coach came to her and said that he wanted her to reconsider her decision because he needed her height. She decided to play basketball again, but that was a fateful decision.

On January 7, 2013—in the winter of her sophomore year while playing basketball—Savannah fell down on the court holding her right knee. The whole gym went silent and she was carted off to the other room. The trainer said he thought it was a subluxed patella and she would be out 6-8 weeks.

The whole time he was evaluating her she kept saying her softball career was over.  The next day, first thing in the morning, we had an appointment and the doctor had a look I will never forget on his face.

The MRI showed an MCL tear and total separation of the ACL.  Savannah thought her softball career was over.  She went through bouts of depression and had to give up her position on the travel ball because she was out that next season and, we feared, possibly forever.

Savannah had to rehab for six weeks before having surgery due to the MCL tear. She went to rehab as much as she could because she wanted to get the surgery done and start recovering.

The surgery was February 20 and she was ready. She told the doctor she would start rehab the day after surgery and she did. The next day we had a snowstorm and she insisted on getting to rehab which normally is a 15 minute trip but turned out to be three hours that day because of the heavy snowfall.

Savannah continued to rehab three days a week for nine months and rehabbed a lot at home also. She looked at Robert Griffith III, Bo Jackson and Lolo Jones as inspiration because they had to come back from serious injuries.

She missed her sophomore track season, but never stopped going to practices and track meets to support her team.  She was told at a doctor’s visit in June that she could hit off a tee and the first ball she hit over the fence off the tee we both cried.

Just to have her back hitting was amazing and Savannah didn’t stop from there on out. She would get done with rehab and come home and want to go to the track and run sprints. We would be up there at night and she would push herself because she wanted her speed back.

Finally, she was cleared to play high school ball in the fall of 2013. She had another teammate that tore her ACL around the same time Savannah did and when they were released to play they were like kids at Christmas!

Savannah struggled at the start of the fall season because she wanted to be perfect and she wasn’t. Still, she went from having a batting average of .100 to finishing the season batting .405.

She woke up one day and said to herself, “I am thinking too much.” She was putting pressure on herself to be what she was before but when she let that go she became more then she ever was.

Savannah was All-Conference, All-District and All-Region her junior year in large part because she had a lot of people who didn’t believe she was going to be the same player she was before her injury and she wanted to show them they were wrong.

She worked with Cat Lee, a former Mizzou player, who helped Savannah gain confidence back in hitting and be strong through all this.  She continued all her rehab even after she was cleared and still to this day works out three days a week with the same trainer, Thomas Brundrage.

Savannah wanted to start going to camps that winter and work on getting back out there for colleges to see her again because she went off their radar.  She went to the Mizzou winter camp and Coach Ehren Earlywine was aware of her coming.  He later offered her a walk-on position and said he really would love to have her.

She continued to go to camps and call schools and told us she wanted to go to a camp she had heard about at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville. A pitcher from a nearby town that Savannah looks up to was getting ready go there and she wanted to see what they were all about.

We mailed her DVD to them and I called and said that she was coming.  When she walked in she knew she was home. The coaches came over and interacted with her and she impressed them with the fact she had so much power from the right side and could turn and go left.

They spoke to her during the camp and spoke to us and when we left she said she wanted to go back next week.  The problem was she had a camp scheduled for another school that was interested in her and wanted to see her after her injury.

She said, “No, I want to come back here because I feel this is the place I need to be.”

After that camp we called and cancelled the next camp and scheduled her to be back the following week at SUIE.  The next Saturday we had her back and the coaches really worked with her and we left feeling confident something could happen.

Shortly after that she got a tour of the facility and Savannah got the offer.  She wanted to look at few other schools and see what the had to offer before making her decision but I think she knew the whole time what her plan was.

She went to Missouri-St. Louis and also thought long and hard about her other offers, but on the way home she said, “I am calling (Head) Coach (Sandy) Montgomery and telling her I want to be a Cougar.”

The best thing in all this was it was exactly one year after her devastating injury.

Savannah has been going strong since.

She ran track her junior season and was All-District and All-Conference in the 100 meters and 4×100 and her 4×100 team broke the school record.

Savannah played all summer with Stealth and played her senior season this fall and was All-State, All-Conference, All-District and All-Region and played in the Senior Showcase.

She is 9th in the MSHSAA records (Missouri record book) for career homer runs at 21 and No. 7 for career home runs per game.

Savannah insisted on signing her Letter of Intent on November 12, 2014 because it was the day after her 18th birthday and it was her great-grandmother’s birthday.

The reason this story is so precious to my heart is that Savannah overcame doubts and injuries and never lost the love for the game through all that. She had lots of tears and needed lots of talks but she overcame and came out on top.

Being a student in a small town and not being from that town originally has been a struggle for her also.  We are so excited for her future. She wants to be a nurse in either oncology or ER. She feels that is her calling to help people and she has a special heart for it.

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Here’s a link to the Southern Illinois-Edwardsville page listing Savannah and the other five signees this fall.