By Ryan Heller
Photos courtesy of the Godwin family
Lexi Godwin spent the night in her Nashville hotel room, sicker than she’s ever been – she couldn’t shower, stand up, sleep or even roll over in her bed.
At around 2 a.m., she received a call from her Chapel Hill doctors telling her to seek medical attention as quickly as possible.
Doctors presented Godwin with the option of going to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center or going back to Chapel Hill, where a team was waiting for her. She chose the latter and by 4 a.m. her mom, Tracey, was driving her eight hours back to North Carolina. Once she arrived at the UNC Ambulatory Care Center, Godwin was rushed through the pre-operation procedures.
She woke up with a large drain coming out of her knee and a catheter in her chest. Her surgeon came in and told her that if she had arrived a few hours later, she would have been fighting for her life. The fate of her UNC softball career was no longer her main concern.
Just two days before, on July 19, 2021, she was at a doctor’s appointment at UNC Campus Health to draw approximately 100 milliliters of fluid from her swollen right knee. This was the same knee she had surgically repaired just eight weeks prior. Both she and the doctors thought everything was fine.
It wasn’t.
Her labs showed that she had a septic joint and her battle with an unrelenting knee infection had just begun. She would now have to undergo another surgery next month.
At the conclusion of that operation, she was told her knee may never get healthy enough to return to competitive softball, the sport that was a childhood dream and a part of her future aspirations. She remained undeterred. She was going to find a way back onto the field somehow.
“Even though it kind of seems like all the odds are stacked up against me, it’s certainly not the first time it’s happened,” Godwin said. “I think I’m most dangerous and I’m most capable when somebody tells me I’m not gonna be able to do something.”
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Godwin’s love for softball began when she was a child living in Selma, North Carolina. She built her own homemade facility in a barn at her house, with a hitting cage and an indoor field.
“She wasn’t a normal kid,” her father, Ricky Godwin, said. “She didn’t really go out with her friends. She went to school and did her homework and every evening we would go to that barn and she would pitch, she would hit and she would field.”
Godwin knew she wasn’t the fastest nor the strongest, but whenever she stepped on home plate, she believed she was the best player in the country. She went from being a pitcher to an everyday hitter and put herself on the collegiate radar.
Despite going on many college visits, there was only one school she was destined to attend. It was the same school she had been sporting cheerleading uniforms of as a toddler, and the same place where she would attempt almost every softball camp it hosted.
“We came to North Carolina and my mom whispered in my ear ‘I don’t care where and if you go anywhere else, I’m wearing Carolina Blue. You’re coming to Chapel Hill,’” Godwin said.
She made it onto the UNC softball team, but not without someone telling her she wasn’t capable of playing at a NCAA Division I level. This criticism came from her travel and high school softball coach, who was like a father to Godwin.
He told her the only reason she’s a Tar Heel is because she’s smart. He said the high school salutatorian didn’t have the athletic prowess to make an impact on a college team.
“It kind of felt like my life was coming to an end because somebody told me I wasn’t going to be able to do the one thing I worked for my entire life up to that point,” Godwin said. “I thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
Godwin parted ways with the coach, and committed to Carolina Elite, led by Dana Fusetti, during the summer of 2015. She transformed from a bench player to a starter at first base on a team that reached a No. 12 national ranking in 2017. It was her time with Fusetti that helped her persuade the North Carolina coaching staff to give her a scholarship to play softball.
Her old coach’s negative comments motivated Godwin to prove him wrong on the field, and when her life was actually at risk, they served as motivation to get back on the field.
“He fueled her with so much negativity that she turned it into something positive to be able to work that much harder to prove him and any other naysayer wrong,” Fusetti said. “People who say that she’s not going to come back from a knee injury she’ll prove wrong.”
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Godwin worked her way into the North Carolina rotation as a freshman, appearing in 41 games and starting in 15 at first base in 2019. But as she continued to increase her physical activity to meet the demands of collegiate athletics, her knee pain became increasingly bothersome.
By her sophomore year, trainers needed to tape her knee straight in order for her to play. She knew something was off, but she didn’t want to get an MRI, fearing it would cut her season short. When COVID-19 ended the team’s 2020 season, she finally elected to get her knee checked by a medical team.
She was diagnosed with patellar maltracking – a disorder she was born with, but never recognized she had. Anytime she straightened her leg, her kneecap would move out of place.
“You go to a surgeon, they’re like ‘I’ll fix everything,’” Godwin said. “Hearing those words, I’m like ‘If you make me feel better, this is the perfect opportunity. I have more time than normal to recover from a surgery because of COVID. So, let’s do it. I’ll be back by next spring.’”
If only it were that easy for her.
After getting a small operation on her knee to fix her patella, the strict COVID-19 protocols prevented her from completing the needed rehab to fully recover. Scar tissue built up around the patellar tendon and her kneecap causing immense pain and swelling.
She tried several injections, combating the scar tissue with saline, and a 30-minute arthroscopic procedure, her second knee surgery in under a year. Nothing seemed to work. Her knee remained swollen until July 21 of last year.
She had no idea what was happening, and neither did the doctors. She hoped that the problem had been solved – but it wasn’t.
Barely a month went by before Godwin relapsed and had to be rushed back into the hospital. Due to her contracting COVID-19 a few days earlier, she had to be isolated in a small room in the main UNC hospital. Even her family couldn’t visit her.
Godwin waited 10 hours for her next surgery alone, fearing for her life. She knew what almost happened last time and tried asking the doctors around her for information, but they gave her nothing. All she was told was that if the infection had gotten into the bone, she’d need a joint replacement.
After another seven days in an intensive care unit, she was released, getting rid of the infection soon enough to avoid significant damage. But she still had more questions than answers.
“I probably have the worst luck of anyone that you’ll ever talk to in your entire life,” Godwin said.
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After her fourth surgery in 13 months, Godwin felt as if her right leg was cut off at her hip. It took her four weeks to walk and over three months to do so without a limp.
“My right quad was literally as big as my left calf,” Godwin said. “It was actually comical to look at.”
Any hitting she did in the fall of 2021 was off of a bucket while sitting. Yet, she still planned to play competitive softball by the spring.
“Once she sets her mind to something, it’s very hard to change it and very hard to throw her off course,” UNC softball head coach Donna Papa said. “She’s somebody who, once she makes her mind up, she’s going for it.
She stayed on campus with Alex Hall, her trainer, during Thanksgiving and winter break to get her quad strength back and to try to set some form of timetable for her injury.
“It’s pretty infuriating,” Hall said. “If you have an ACL tear, you know nine months to a year is when you’re getting back into full swing of things. Whereas this kind of injury and recovery is so unknown.”
She was eventually able to practice while standing using a hinge brace that locked her knee into place. It’s as if she is running with wooden sticks attached to each side of her leg, but without it, her knee becomes unstable.
“I’m pretty much playing with a lit match and gasoline,” Godwin said. “One wrong step or one wrong hit to my knee would end my career.”
The thought of another surgery made her fearful of another infection, but it never quelled her desire to reclaim her spot in the Tar Heel rotation. Soon enough, she returned to practice.
Godwin said she felt like Superwoman, enduring two consecutive three-hour practices. But she was far from healed. Her entire leg, including her calf and foot, was swollen and she was unable to walk. She went back to the surgeon, who warned her that if these types of reactions continued, she would have to medically retire from softball.
Godwin wasn’t going to relinquish her softball dream. She brushed aside the doctor’s cautions. It was worth the risk.
“I’ve never really been good at listening to people’s advice anyways,” Godwin said.
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On Mar. 13, 2022, the Tar Heels were trailing 3-1 in the decisive third game of their series against Boston College. With the bases loaded, Papa called Godwin out of the dugout to pinch hit. The redshirt junior had already hit rock bottom, she knew she had nothing to lose.
She walked up to the plate and swung at the first two pitches with no success. The first was called a strike, while the second was ruled an illegal throw. On the third pitch, she knew before the ball was even released that she was going to swing.
The ball smacked against the aluminum bat and into an open part of the outfield for a double. She ran as fast as she physically could past first base and onto second – much to the dismay of Hall – as three runners crossed home plate to give UNC a 4-3 lead.
This was all thanks to a woman who many thought wouldn’t put on a North Carolina jersey ever again.
“I’m a very unemotional guy,” Ricky Godwin said. “And to me, it felt like a walk off to win the College World Series because of everything that she has gone through.”
It was a moment that gave Godwin the confidence that she can make a comeback and the validation that she had made the right decision to pursue the game she adored. She weathered through her internal fears of never returning and won the game for her team.
“It was the absolute best medicine that she could have gotten,” Tracey Godwin said.
When surgeons told her she wouldn’t play again, she never let up hope. When doctors informed her the earliest she could get back onto the field was in April 2022, she did so two months earlier. It lit a fire in her that has been burning since she was first doubted in high school.
“Some call it stubbornness, some call it determination,” Godwin said. “I’m starting to think maybe it’s a little bit of insanity because I continue to fight like hell to get on the field when most people would have just walked away and called it a career.”
Now she plans on remaining at UNC for two more years to take advantage of her extra eligibility. Instead of pursuing her original goals of becoming an attorney, she now wants to coach softball when her playing career ends – on her own terms.
She still believes she will reclaim her spot as an everyday starter at first base, and there’s nothing anyone can say to change her mind.
“You’ve proved people wrong, so why not do it again,” Godwin said.
