Mexico’s Kierstan Epperson has not only played softball for a while but has done so at a high level.

Epperson has the chance to apply what she has learned in her years of competitive softball in travel and high school leagues to college as she signed with NJCAA’s Moberly Area Community College. The senior made her future plans known during a Friday ceremony at Mexico Sports Complex and became the second Lady Bulldog to sign with the Greyhounds after senior pitcher Eboni Mayfield.

As for Epperson’s position, she is unclear where she will play but is ready to fit in anywhere. With Mexico, Epperson provided good defense at first base, finishing with a .976 fielding percentage and only committing five errors in 212 total chances spread between 30 games this season. In her years of travel ball that span back to when she was 10-12 years old, Epperson didn’t stay at first.

“For my travel ball team, I played outfield,” Epperson said. “I’ve moved around on my travel team. I played everywhere besides pitcher and catcher so (MACC head coach Matt Bauer) can put me wherever.”

Epperson’s foot seemed to affixed to first base as a Lady Bulldog as every infield throw would head her way as well as every pickoff throw from freshman catcher Hannah Loyd this season. Her chemistry with Loyd impressed head coach Curt Riley.

“The combination with her and Hannah, we were able to pick off several people off of first and that hurt people’s running games and slowed them down,” Riley said. “That kept us in a lot of ballgames, and in fact, it won us some big games.”

Epperson said there were challenges at first base when it came to reading all the infielders’ throws and accounting for wind. When it comes to everywhere else on the diamond, she said it doesn’t feel that much different to her.

“The only difference is you got to cover bases at different times,” Epperson said. “The outfield is pretty much the same like left field covers third, center covers second and right field covers first.”

The all-North Central Missouri Conference team member during her junior year also provides a valuable bat to a lineup as she had another solid season at the plate as a senior. Epperson finished with a slash line of .337/.413/.467 and collected 31 hits, 24 RBI and seven doubles in 30 games.

One of Epperson’s standout hitting performances happened in a September home game against conference foe Moberly. She finished 3-for-5 with three RBI, and her third RBI was the game-winning run to defeat the Lady Spartans 12-11 and finish an 11-6 comeback in the seventh inning.

“I don’t think we’ve seen Kierstan’s best softball,” Riley said. “She is a really good first baseman, always a good bat, and defensively, she’s as good as we saw this fall. It’s a tougher level, but she’s a tough kid, coming back from hip surgery like she is and she’s moving around really well.”

Epperson said she has played travel softball with the LunaChix in Mexico, Galaxy in Columbia and now Phenom in Jefferson City (which was renamed to Evolution). She has been around many talented girls and is ready for her new teammates at MACC.

She said she feels comfortable around the players there, which was a good fit to go along with her nursing major at the two-year school. Having a familiar face in Mayfield is nice, though, as she enjoyed her four years as a Lady Bulldog.

“I’m totally excited because we’ve known each other for a long time,” Epperson said. “We’ve been friends since we were little.

“Probably the bus rides. I’ll miss that for sure. We stayed in a hotel one night (in Sullivan). That was a blast. It’s just the little things about this team.”