West Harrison alum Marley Sims signs with South Alabama softball

During the start of COVID, we ran a feature piece on former West Harrison softball stand out Marley Sims, who chose to forego her senior season in favor of signing with Chipola College as a 17-year-old high school graduate.

It seems it turned out to be a pretty good decision.

Today, Sims making it official with South Alabama where she’ll have two years of eligibility remaining as a rising junior shortstop.

During her two years at Chipola, the former Hurricane lit up the hit column, leading the team with a .444 batting average as a freshman and then as a sophomore pacing the Indians in runs, doubles, walks, stolen bases, and on-base percentage.

She was First Team All-Panhandle Conference both seasons and First-Team All-State in 2022.

Sims says she’s always had dreams of playing division I softball and now she gets to live out those dreams right down the road in Mobile. “So, I think for me, softball is softball and I’ll always tell myself that. It’ll always bring you back to fundamentals, and I think I have a pretty good understanding of my fundamentals and knowing that if I’m messing up on something, I know what to fix and how to fix it. So, I think no matter what level, it is always softball, and I know that it’ll get a little bit faster, a little bit faster paced, but I don’t think that it’s anything too tricky to handle. A lot of Sundays at the field, a lot of practices, a lot of after-practice practices, just to be where I am now.”

Sims says her instant connection with Head Coach Becky Clark about softball as well as life off-the-field was a big factor in her decision.