Genoa-Kingston senior softball player Lizzy Davis got the chance last month to go to Europe and show off her softball skills.

Well, most of them.

Davis participated in The Cup, which featured teams from across the United States and Europe competing in an indoor version of the game in Schiedam, Netherlands.

Bases were 50 feet apart. A literal soft ball was used. If a ball hit the ceiling - no higher than a normal gym - it was an out. The right field fence was 10 feet beyond first base.

And most notably for the Cogs’ single-season home run leader, any ball over the fence was a double.

“Technically, home runs aren’t a thing,” Davis said. “I did clear the fence, but a home run is only a double. There’s no right field down there. Ten feet behind first base was a wall.”

That didn’t slow Davis down. The slugger had a hit in every game, including a double over the fence. After batting cleanup in the first game, she hit leadoff in the remaining three games and finished the tournament 5 for 9 with two runs and three RBIs for her Midwest Aftershock team, led by her travel team coaches Jason and JoAnn Yakey.

Davis blasted 11 home runs last year for the Cogs and has 17 for her career. The current school record is 20.

Even with the power aspect of her game sidelined, Davis said she loved the modified version of the game.

“I thought it was cool,” Davis said. “For our warmups, our coach would smack the ball off the wall and we would have to peel it off the wall. I thought it was cool.”

Davis also wasn’t called upon to pitch, although that’s not unusual for her travel ball career. For the Cogs she spends time in the circle, but the rest of the year she spends time at first and third base.

She played the corners in Europe and didn’t commit and error.

Another big adjustment, aside from taking away the long ball, was playing against a much higher level of competition.

“I’ve obviously grown up playing this sport for a while and going down there, it was so different,” Davis said. “The bases are 50 feet apart. You start with a 1-1 count. You’re playing on a rubber floor with a very soft ball. And it was crazy to play down there with girls who were Olympians. There were girls who were 28 years old, 40 years old.”

Davis said she spent almost three months training for two hours before her regular travel ball practices for the trip. Her coaches would crank the pitching machine up to 70 miles per hour. They would stand close to the infielder and hit balls as hard as they could.

At the plate, Davis had to work on shortening her swing. Hitting grounders may not be the ideal outcome for her most of the year, but it was her goal in the Netherlands.

“I tend to hit a lot of balls pretty high,” Davis said. “With all the home runs I hit, they tend to go straight up in the air and straight out. So that was a challenge going out there. So I had to focus on hitting the top of the ball because I didn’t want to strike out by hitting the ceiling.”

All that hard work didn’t just pay off on the field. Davis also said she really enjoyed the chance to play tourist in Europe. That included getting to see Rotterdam on the first day in Europe, about five miles away from Schiedam.

On the second day, the team got to go to Amsterdam and see the Anne Frank House as well as a canal tour of the city.

After the tournament, the team went to Paris, about the same distance from Schiedam as Genoa is from St. Louis.

“We got to see a bunch of sights and historical buildings so that was really cool,” Davis said. “Then after we were done playing we were able to go to Paris. Just being able to see the Eiffel Tower and the Notre Dame Cathedral, everything like that, was super cool.”

Now she’s back practicing with her travel ball team and getting ready for her season with the Cogs to begin. Davis said a lot of the mechanics were somewhat similar to the high school season, particularly the start of the school season.

Cold weather and rain tend to push practices into gyms, where softer balls are used on hard gym floors.

“I would kind of relate it more to high school ball,” Davis said. “Our tryouts tend to be in the gyms because of weather, so we tend to use softies and we tend to be on gyms floors. So it was a lot like high school, just quicker paced.”