She had an idea the call would call at some point. She just had no idea when.

Lexi Winters, back home in Lexington, was out to Carolina Wing’s for dinner with her family and boyfriend. No chance she would get a call then, right?

Wrong. She was only a few minutes into sitting down at the restaurant, getting ready to order, when the call came in. Ashley Chastain was on the line.

“So then I was like, ‘I gotta go.’ So I ran outside,” Winters told GamecockCentral. “And she obviously just explains everything to me of what’s happening. And just kind of puts out the feelers for me of just to consider the option or consider the chance of me going, and I start crying. I was crying, and then giggling and then crying.

“One of our family friends was outside at the time and they saw me on the phone, and they were like, ‘Is Lexi okay?’ And then my parents kind of said, ‘Well, if she’s giggling that’s a good sign.’”

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After she hung up, Winters ran back inside, feeling a million emotions rushing through her at once. This was what she hoped for. A chance to come home, play for her dream school. It was all coming to fruition.

“I like shake my head, ‘Yes.’ And then my parents are just opening their arms up. I gave them a hug, I gave my boyfriend a hug. It was just like the, oh my gosh, I get to come home kind of a thing,” Winters said.

Winters was offered the opportunity to come play at South Carolina for Chastain, who will enter her first year as the program’s head softball coach. And for Winters, it was a no-brainer decision, one she really didn’t have to put much thought into. Basically an immediate yes. She called it “a dream come true for me.”

Winters, a catcher at Charlotte for the last two seasons, officially committed to the Gamecocks on June 16. She’ll come to Columbia as the reigning American Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year.

But to understand why the choice was so simple, you have to know where she comes from. Winters is a local product. She lives in nearby Lexington with her family and attended White Knoll High School. So this will undoubtedly be a homecoming for her.

“I was born and raised in Gamecock country, if you will,” Winters said. “Softball specifically, we went to every single softball game that we could at USC. Anytime my parents had the chance to take me to Beckham Field, they took me.”

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When Winters was just a little girl, she got the chance to become a bat girl for South Carolina for a few games. Her parents saw an advertisement for this role and quickly signed her up for it, knowing how much she already loved softball.

“I’d just go and they gave a little walk through tour of the stadium. They got to take me through all the back way to get to the dugout,” she said. “And when I was 11 years old, it was like the biggest thing of my life. But they got like Gamecock softball shirts, and then I have a whole bunch of pictures of the two times I was bat girl. … I went to every single game that I could go to. And I went to every single camp that I was able to go to from when I was seven years old, which is when I started playing. I’ve always been a Gamecock fan. I went to Gamecock volleyball, always going to the football games. But yeah, I was born and raised in Gamecock country.”

Now, she’ll be able to live out her childhood dream and play on the same field as the players she grew up idolizing, one of which was Carrie Lyons. She was the one of the first phone calls Winters made after things started to come together for her.

“She was my catching coach from once when I started softball all the way till I went to high school before I left for Charlotte. And she was a catcher on the team. She was on the 1997 team, the one that went to the Women’s College World Series,” Winters said. “She was just like, ‘You get to be at the same home plate that I was at. I think that just gives me goosebumps just even thinking about it. I’m going to be in the same position as she was, and I’ve looked up to her for pretty much my whole life. Just being able to think of myself standing behind the plate, the same place that she was is just amazing. It makes me just so happy.”