After a successful first season of college softball at Bryan in nearby Dayton, former Ooltewah High School standout Addison Keylon had decided that, regardless of any future athletic endeavors, she was going to attend the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the fall 2020 semester.
Maybe she would be a softball player there. Perhaps she would join the soccer program - she lettered in that sport as well as softball and volleyball during her prep days for the Lady Owls. There was also the possibility she would just be a student working on a degree in exercise science.
Either she chose UTC softball, or UTC softball chose her.
Whatever the case, it's been a good marriage that had its biggest highlight yet for Keylon in Saturday's Southern Conference tournament championship matchup at UNC Greensboro. She hit her seventh home run of the year in the third-seeded Mocs' 9-7 comeback win over the top-seeded Spartans to clinch the program's first conference title since 2019.
More highlights could be ahead. The sophomore outfielder's season is about to be extended by an NCAA tournament appearance, the 12th in program history.
"At the end of the day, I knew what type of player I was, and I was confident in myself," Keylon said Wednesday. "So I was pretty confident if they gave me the opportunity that I wasn't going to disappoint them.
"Last week was such a special moment. I couldn't have got here without this team, without these coaches, without the opportunities they gave me. So I was very thankful because two years ago, they allowed me to be a part of this team and this family."
As a Bryan freshman in 2020, when the Lady Lions played 19 games before the remainder of their season was canceled by the pandemic, the left-handed Keylon led the team in multiple categories, including hits, total bases and stolen bases. After transferring to UTC, she started 32 of the 33 games in which she appeared last year and hit a grand slam.
But much like the team as a whole, Keylon went through a midseason slump this spring. The coaching staff knew she was a capable player in the field, but the Mocs needed offense - and she wasn't providing that.
Prior to UTC's series at Western Carolina to finish the regular season, Keylon was hitting .157 with two homers and four RBIs. But she worked with coaches to improve those numbers, and in the past seven games she has nine hits in 17 at-bats (a .529 batting average) with five homers and 10 RBIs.
"She had come to us and basically asked if she was going to get any more playing time," said coach Frank Reed, who now has 10 NCAA berths in 21 seasons leading the program. "We knew she was our best defensive player, but we were trying to get our best hitters in, especially when you have a run of losing games because you're not hitting the ball.
"But we never questioned her ability, and she's far exceeded her hitting abilities."
The reward for everyone involved is that spot in the NCAA tournament, and the Mocs (29-25) will face Tuscaloosa Regional host Alabama (41-11) - the No. 6 national seed - at 4 p.m. Eastern on Friday in an SEC Network-televised matchup, with Murray State (40-16-1) and Stanford (36-19) meeting after that. The double-elimination regional will then resume Saturday and is scheduled to finish Sunday, with the last team standing moving on to next week's super regionals.
Will the Mocs continue their recent hot streak? The way the team is playing right now, nothing seems impossible.
"I feel like we all went through our ups and downs. I knew at the beginning of the season, everybody was on and everybody was doing well," Keylon said. "I was in my slump, but the majority of the team was in their groove, and then we all kind of got in a slump around the same time, and then it seems like just a few weeks ago we started winning. Everybody just gained their confidence, and now I feel like we're all in a groove together and we all work really well together."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.