When Chandler Ellis tells her friends about her summer vacation plans, she said the reaction is almost a universal one of shock and awe.

“I tell them I’m going to Cuba,” she said with a laugh, “and they’re just like ‘What!? Cuba!?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, Cuba.’”

Yes, Cuba. Not the small town in Alabama that sits just across the state border, either. The big one. The communist country located 90 miles south of Florida that was closed off to most American travelers for half a century.

Ellis is going from June 28 to July 3 as part of a softball all-star team from the Beach League, a college summer league based in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. They’ll conduct a youth softball clinic and play four doubleheaders in Havana against the Cuban national team.

Ellis has played softball in eight states during the dozen or so years she’s been with teams on the youth, high school and junior college levels, but this is the first time she’s played international competition.

“I’ve never been out of the country before. Just getting my passport, I was excited,” said Ellis, who just finished her freshman season as a pitcher for East Mississippi Community College. “I love traveling. I’m excited to visit new places. I’ve always wanted to visit Europe or somewhere like that. I want to sightsee if we could, and I want to walk through the neighborhoods.”

Ellis probably won’t get to do that, at least not on her own.

The U.S. government this year lifted travel restrictions to Cuba, which Beach League director Marty Radford said made planning the trip easier. There have been several sports teams from various levels that have played exhibition games against the Cuban national teams in recent months.

“I’ve been trying to take teams to Cuba for a few years, and we picked a really good year to do it because things have really eased up,” Radford said.

Once the team is in Cuba, however, Radford said its movements will be tightly controlled for both safety and to keep from causing any major incidents. No one, for example, will be permitted to wander off on their own side trips.

“We’re telling them that we’re all staying in a group the whole trip. If somebody wants to go shopping, and the group doesn’t want to go, you can’t go,” Radford said. “We’re trying to be very touristy. We’re going to play our games and be tourists.”

Ellis got her spot on the Beach League team through an East Mississippi teammate, Breanna Glass. Glass was playing in the Beach League — which is a softball version of college baseball summer leagues like the famous Cape Cod League — and wrangled a spot on the Cuba trip. She asked Ellis if she wanted to go.

Ellis and Glass are the only two junior college players on the 15-player roster. The rest come from NCAA Division I and Division II programs.

“This is one of those things where it’s about being in the right place at the right time,” said Ellis’ father, Brian Ellis, the head coach at Vicksburg High School. “Just the quality softball players she’s going to play, it’s something that all the hard work she’s put in is paying off. It’s exciting to know it’s going to pay off in something like this.”

As excited as Chandler Ellis is about seeing a foreign country most Americans have never had the chance to visit, she seemed equally so about playing high-level competition.

The Cuban national team is using the series as tryouts for next month’s Pan Am Games in Toronto. That means the Beach League all-stars will play some of Cuba’s best players, who are playing for high stakes at an individual level.

“I’m ready to see the speed and pick it up, and learn from a billion different girls,” Chandler Ellis said. “It’s being around a whole different softball atmosphere. It’s going to be different.”

The Ellises are a family that’s passionate about softball and baseball, and Brian Ellis said he’s looking forward to picking his daughter’s brain for tips when she returns.

“That’s the neat thing about this, is her getting to go and play with people who have had so many different experiences,” Brian Ellis said. “I’m excited, when she gets back, just to hear the stories. I think she’ll have a blast going over there and seeing a different culture and the way the game is played in a different country. I’ve never been out of the U.S., so at least my kids get to do it.”

Chandler Ellis was just hoping the trip doesn’t pass by too quickly.

“It keeps coming,” she said. “I hope it goes by slow, because I want to take it all in.”