Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 9 No. 5 | May 2017

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He agreed to release her to talk to other schools except for those in the ACC and future Tech
opponents—standard operating procedure in most transfer situations.
“Honestly, she was just hard to coach,” Thomas said. “She didn’t accept coaching at
that point.”
“I think that I was very selfish as a freshman, and I felt like I was just as good as everyone else,”
Richardson admitted. “I didn’t really understand the process.”
Richardson wound up transferring to Tusculum College, a Division II school in Greeneville,
Tennessee. Yet her stay in the Volunteer State lasted all of four months.
“I knew that school was not for me,” she admitted.
She returned back to Louisa County at the end of the fall semester and started taking classes at
Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville that spring. No longer on scholarship, she
landed several jobs, which provided the income needed to make tuition, rent and car payments. Softball,
at the time, was in her rearview mirror.
She worked as a personal care assistant for an in-home care company and set up displays for American
Greetings, a greeting card company. On the weekends, she added a job working at a local winery. All of these
helped her make ends meet.
“At that time, I really didn’t know what I was going to do,” she said. “I started going to community
college and taking courses, and it was like, ‘OK, I’ll take classes here, and I’ll eventually transfer to
UVA or something like that after I get done.’”
That lifestyle lasted throughout the spring and most of the summer. For the first time in
what seemed like forever, she did not set foot on a softball field.
Working three jobs and taking classes afforded her little time to reminisce about
the game, but during those pockets of free time, she longed for it. She also realized
that she found herself falling into a pattern that so many in her county fall into—
I ’m very proud of
her. A lot of people
don’t know her story.
They just think she
showed back up.
It’s a pretty special
story because she
accepted the fact
that there were
some failures there
and wanted to work
hard and be the best
she could—and
she’s done it.
Tech softball coach
Scot Thomas
on Aysha Richardson
“
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softball spotlight aysha richardson