Last Friday, Extra Inning Softball announced that Mia Williams, the infielder from Windermere, Florida, was the #1 overall player in the 2023 Extra Elite 100.
The first 7th grader to commit when she verballed to Tim Walton and the Florida Gators when she committed in the fall of 2017, Mia has become well-known in the sport on and off the softball field already—and she’s only 15-years-old.
We spoke today with the student-athlete’s mother, Denika, about Mia on and off the field… and found some fun, funny and interesting aspects of this quiet, but fiercely competitive young softball player’s life we think you’ll enjoy…
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1. The Family’s Best Athlete Is?
When the dad, Jason (“White Chocolate”) played in the NBA, the mom, Denika, was an Olympic track qualifier, eldest child Jaxon (17-years-old) is also a hoop player and 15-year-old Mia is ranked as the top softball player nationally in her grad class, you have a pretty good list to choose from as to who the best athlete is in the family. But the best athlete of the Williams family quintet many feel is the youngest, 10-year-old Nina, who is skilled at tennis and, yes, softball.
“Nina is so good at tennis,” says Denika, mom of the three. “She plays basketball too and trains a lot with Mia so she’s around softball. Nina is definitely the best athlete of all of us.”
Josh Fisher, Mia’s softball coach with the Tennessee Mojo, agrees. “Nina is just starting to pitch and she can fly, she’s so fast and runs like her mom.”
One advantage the youngest has is that college softball coaches already know who she is.
“On the recruiting circuit,” the girls’ mom explains, “when the coaches were looking to find Mia they’d look for the little girl with the white hair playing around the fields (Nina) and when they found her they’d know Mia was on a field close by.”
2. Why She Wasn’t Born on Halloween
Mia woulda/coulda/shoulda been born on Halloween of 2004, if not for a nurse who gave Denika a stern warning.
“She told me: ‘Don’t have your baby born on the Devil’s birthday!’” Mia’s mom laughs. “So I held her in until a couple hours into November 1 and that’s why she wasn’t born on Halloween!”
3. Big, Big Baby…
At birth Mia was 10 pounds, 13 ounces and 22-inches long and, amazingly, that was with her being born two weeks early.
No telling how big she would have been if she had gone to full term.
“She came into the world looking she does now!” jokes the athlete’s mother.
4. Culinary Halloween Costumes
Every Halloween for the 13-years Mia has been trick-or-treating, she’s been a food. Yes… as in something to eat. This year she was a taco and previously she’s been a hot dog, a banana, a bunch of grapes (“even her head was a grape,” laughs Denika), an M&M, a doughnut and a hamburger.
The year she started being recruited, Mia dressed as a sushi roll and when college coaches would ask the young athlete to send a photo, she didn’t know what to forward so many times the sushi pic was their first look at the young athlete. “It was embarrassing,” mom remembers. “I’d ask Mia, ‘Oh my gosh, is that what you sent to Oklahoma or Florida?!?’ Heather Tarr called Mia ‘sushi roll’ for a while.
Denika’s favorite costume was the hot dog. “It was the year of all these Disney princesses and we live near Orlando and Disney World so all of Mia’s class was one princess or another and in the middle you see this hot dog.”
