Feature: Famous on the field and off, meet Alicia Wallick

“The girl who is TikTok famous” is a commonly (and accurately) thrown around description of Alicia Wallick, USC Aiken’s softball pitcher. It ‘s safe to say she’s famous on and off the field.

You may have already seen her moves on screen, but have you seen her in action as an athlete?

Wallick, junior Business major, has been playing softball since the age of four. She says that she couldn’t see herself playing any other sport as softball is the only sport that she has ever loved.

She played as the starting position at Columbia International University for two years, enjoying the team but disliked the school’s strict policies. She later transferred to Francis Marion in better hopes. Another unsatisfying experience led her to USCA.

Alicia thought that she may never play college softball again when she met Coach Poole, the USCA softball coach.

“Coach Poole came out of nowhere and was like ‘I want you on my team’ and she literally pretty much saved me from not playing softball again,” she expressed.

There was a time where she thought that maybe college softball wasn’t for her, and it was last fall when softball was consuming her in her old school. When COVID hit, she was fine not playing softball and was enjoying her life.

That was until she saw everyone was still playing and she wasn’t, and she decided she needed to play again.

In fact, she was so good last year, that she was ranked in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics.

While softball has many ups, it has some downs too, such as not having as much time for other things and having a hard time studying things the night before. “But that’s where balance comes in,” Wallick said. 

While she expresses that having “more time to do schoolwork, and rest,” would be ideal, she also recognizes practice is important, too.

Her TikToks vary from softball footage to other content, and both types of videos have had their successes.

In regards to being considered TikTok famous, Wallick stated that there is an initial embarrassment to it: “When people you know say ‘Hey I saw your video on my for you page and it blew up,’ and you’re kinda like that’s embarrassing. But then you have people that you run into randomly and they’re like ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Alicia Wallick, I see her on Tiktok and she’s famous’ and [that’s] really cool, because it’s like oh my gosh, people enjoy my stuff, people look up to me and it’s really cool.

She continued, “To go out in public and people being like ‘I look up to you’ because I’ve gotten a lot of messages and stuff saying— one girl told me that I saved her life because my videos made her happy. She was like ‘I was at a really low point in my life and just watching your videos and seeing how happy you are with struggling— how happy you can be while dealing with stuff just inspired me.’”

Wallick stated that she never expected or even considered getting close to fame, but according to her, “it’s awesome.”