Why college softball's best pitcher turned down hundreds of thousands to stay at Belmont

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Maya Johnson remembers them all, every slight, even if they weren’t intended that way and came from her closest people.The Belmont senior pitcher and All-American, of course, can tick off the schools that didn’t recruit her out of Columbia Station, Ohio. She’ll never forget the one that landed her, Pittsburgh, refusing to clear her to play as a freshman because of her struggles with lupus, a chronic disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks its own organs. She recalls her mother, Kristen Johnson, begging her to come home and rest after a semester of college.Advertisement