Christian Quinn always wanted to go away to college.

Growing up in Hattiesburg, Quinn initially had her sights set on attending school in a big city: New York. Philadelphia. Chicago.

She knew it would be difficult. She wanted it that way.

“Everything that’s easy isn’t worth it,” Quinn said. “Everything that’s hard is like the best thing ever.”

Offered a chance to play softball at Florida SouthWestern State College, Quinn found that out — fittingly — the hard way. The first week she spent in Fort Myers, more than 10 hours away from the city she called home, she cried, fearing she’d be rejected by her new teammates and would spend two years alone 700 miles from her family.

“This is the worst decision of my entire life,” she thought.

Quickly, Quinn proved herself wrong. She branched out, made friends and turned her junior college experience into a positive.

“It’s always hard to go somewhere you have no idea, but at the end, you’re going to look back and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, that was totally worth it,’” she said. “And it was totally worth it.”

Ultimately, it brought Quinn right back to her home state. She signed with Mississippi State in June 2018, spent the 2019 and 2020 seasons in Starkville and used her extra year of eligibility to remain with the Bulldogs this spring.

And ahead of Mississippi State’s game Wednesday at Southern Miss in the heart of Quinn’s hometown, the fifth-year senior reflected on the winding path that led her to find a home in Starkville.

“Life is always going to throw you a curveball,” Quinn said. “You just kind of have to go with the pitch.”

‘What did I get myself into?’

Quinn admits she was an average athlete in her days playing softball for Oak Grove High School.

By the time she graduated in 2016, she held offers from a few mid-major Division I programs and several junior colleges. While her older sister Constance had gone straight to LSU, Quinn — converted from a right-handed hitter to a lefty midway through her prep career — wasn’t ready for that.

“She just didn’t have the experience at all,” said Robert Iamurri, who started the softball program at Florida SouthWestern in 2016 and remains the Buccaneers’ coach.

Iamurri said he thrives on finding players who have slipped through the recruiting cracks, including juniors and seniors who could be considered “late bloomers” and those who have otherwise been overlooked by bigger programs. He realized Quinn had exactly what he wanted in a future Buc.

“I saw the athleticism; I saw the hustle; I saw the competitiveness — everything that we look for in a player here,” Iamurri said.

Toward the end of her junior year, Quinn first received an email from Florida SouthWestern. She didn’t see it — it was her parents, Wiley and Juanita, who brought it to her attention.

“Who looks at their email when they’re 16, 17?” Quinn pointed out. “Nobody.”

She and her family made the drive to Fort Myers to visit Florida SouthWestern, which has seen players earn their way onto the roster at No. 4 Alabama, No. 16 Louisiana, Maryland, Syracuse and other schools in just a few short years of the program. Quinn committed to play for Iamurri before she even left town.

But when she got to campus that fall, the transition to an entirely new place wasn’t easy. While it had been easy to make friends at Oak Grove — where she was an athlete, where her siblings had walked the halls, where her mom Juanita worked as a ninth-grade English teacher — it wasn’t the same more than 700 miles away.

Before the first week was over, Quinn called her parents in tears.

“What did I get myself into?” she wondered.

Things soon got better. Quinn realized it was up to her to put herself out there, and it didn’t take long for her to feel more comfortable. By the following week, she had made plenty of friends.

“Now I look back on it, I was like, ‘That was the best decision of my life,’” she said.

‘How would you like to go back to Mississippi?’

If Quinn was worried when she first came to Florida SouthWestern, Iamurri said, “she hid it well.”

As a freshman in 2017, Quinn showed no traces of nerves as she played well enough to beat out a returning player for a starting spot in a lineup where the top seven players all typically went on to play D-I ball. A lefty slapper with power up the middle, she hit fifth in the Bucs’ order, in the ideal place to drive in the two fellow left-handers who hit first and second for FSW. 

In the outfield, Iamurri said Quinn would go “all out” — leaping to snag softballs at the fence or diving to snare them before they hit the grass.

One day, on the recruiting trail while between games at a travel ball tournament, Iamurri sat in the bleachers with Mississippi State coach Vann Stuedeman, whom he knew well: His daughter Ryan had played infield at Alabama for four years while Stuedeman was the Crimson Tide pitching coach. The two discussed Florida SouthWestern players, and Quinn’s name came up.

In May 2018, while Quinn got loose at a practice, Iamurri posed the question.

“How would you like to go back to Mississippi?” he said.
“Where?” Quinn queried.

When she heard her coach say “Mississippi State,” she shrugged it off. Though Quinn and her teammates knew they were good enough to merit attention from big schools, it wasn’t common.

“In our experience at FSW for the first two years, those huge offers really were not expected,” she said.

But after a game that weekend, Quinn’s parents let her know Mississippi State assistant Tyler Bratton wanted to talk to her. The two spent half an hour on the phone.

Within the week, Quinn committed to Mississippi State. With the Bulldogs on the road for NCAA Regional play in Tucson, Arizona, she never even got a chance to visit the campus.

But even though she’d be coming into a brand-new situation once again, things were different after her positive experience in Fort Myers.

“When I was coming into Mississippi State, there was no reason for me to be scared,” Quinn said.

Her new teammates made sure of that. At the initial potluck thrown to introduce Mississippi State’s new players to the team in the fall of 2018, Quinn got to chatting with infielder Lindsey Williams, who just so happened to ask Quinn when her birthday was. 

“Sept. 12,” the new Bulldog answered.

That day, Quinn arrived to find a surprise party orchestrated by Williams. Not only were Quinn’s teammates in attendance, but so were friends from her high school, from her hometown and even from Florida SouthWestern. Quinn, certainly, was surprised.

“It’s usually people that you’ve known forever,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone that I’ve just met throw me a surprise party. The feeling is just a great feeling — a feeling of being wanted.”

‘What else are we going to do?’

That feeling stuck with Quinn through the 2019 season, in which she took on a backup outfielder role as a junior. Stationed in right field March 31 at No. 4 Alabama — exactly two years ago Wednesday — she robbed the Tide of a home run in the sixth inning of a 9-9 game as the Bulldogs went on to win in extras.

When Mississippi State visited Quinn’s hometown with a game at Southern Miss on March 11, 2020, the senior had received a bigger role, playing in 22 of the Bulldogs’ first 27 games. She pinch-hit for Candace Denis in the sixth inning of a 7-2 win.

But by the end of the game, the first case of COVID-19 in Mississippi had been reported. It was in Forrest County — home to Hattiesburg. 

Mississippi State’s coaches let Quinn and her teammates say goodbye to their parents, but the young fans who lined the first-base stands were out of luck. The players didn’t understand why it was all such a big deal.

“We were thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, why is everyone freaking out?” Quinn said. “‘Why will they not let us sign these balls for these little girls?’”

On the bus ride home, the coaches tried to make sense of things. They planned to see how the situation developed, have a couple meetings and, soon, be back on the field. But the next day, with the Bulldogs tied for first in the nation in wins, the 2020 season was put on hold. It never resumed.

“You’re just like, ‘What the heck?’” Quinn said. “‘Who would have thought that would have been our last game of the season?’”

When the NCAA granted spring-sport athletes an eligibility waiver, head coach Samantha Ricketts and her staff gave Mississippi State’s five seniors time to enjoy life for a while and decide on their futures with the team. Denis and Williams decided to move on, but Quinn, first baseman Fa Leilua and pitcher Alyssa Loza got to thinking.

“Well, you know, we might as well,” the trio decided. “What else are we going to do?”

That put Quinn back in the maroon and white, and so far, her role has continued to expand. So far in 2021, she’s played in 27 of the Bulldogs’ 29 games, starting 24.

Now, the fifth-year senior returns again to her old roots. She’s coming back to Southern Miss, where the 2020 season came to a “traumatic” end, with renewed hope and her family in the stands once more.

“It’s pretty cool for them to come watch me play,” Quinn said. “It’s just a really cool experience to play in the town that you grew up in and you’re coming back to.”

When she takes the field Wednesday night, she’ll do so with Florida SouthWestern, as always, on her mind and in her heart.

“Everything that I know, everything I am as an athlete and as a person came from my JUCO,” she said.

Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.