Former baseball star earns softball scholarship at FIU after recovering from knee injury

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Ashton Lansdell’s journey to the Florida International University softball team is truly unique.

She never played a game of softball before earning a scholarship to play for the Panthers.

Lansdell has spent most of her life playing on a different diamond and hitting a smaller ball: a baseball.

She was a star playing the game growing up and through high school. She won gold in the 2019 Pan American games and also became the first woman to play baseball at the NJCAA level, but then she suffered a knee injury which derailed her career.

Ashton’s Team USA coach connected her with her current coach at FIU.

Now she is earning her degree thanks to a scholarship playing a game she never had before.