Photo By Stephen Dachman
Imagine routinely returning to the site of your life’s most traumatic moment. That’s the case for Poly’s junior pitcher, Ashley Betance-Kearn.
On Cinco De Mayo last year in a game against the Wilson Bruins at Joe Rodgers Field (where most Poly and Wilson softball games are held) Betance-Kearn walked to the circle for the top of the second inning like she had done so many times.
“I remember that day my arm wasn’t feeling strong,” says Betance-Kearn, who had worked hard as a sophomore ace to keep the Jackrabbits in the playoff hunt. “I was lethargic and not intense, and I know it sounds cliché, but it felt like something weird was going to happen.”
Sure enough, Wilson’s Kasie Cochrane led off the inning with a shot back up the middle, and Betance-Kearn couldn’t get her glove up in time. Cochrane got all of the ball, and the ball got all of Betance-Kearn’s nose and cheek.
“I remember closing my eyes as I got hit,” says Betance-Kearn. “And then I was on the ground… my nose started gushing blood like water from a garden hose.”
“For a few minutes it had nothing to do with the rivalry,” said Poly head coach Munger after the game. “I have to give credit to the Wilson staff… they had people out there immediately, and had the paramedics here pretty quick.”
At Community Hospital of Long Beach, doctors told the junior and her family that the fractured nose and right cheekbone was a best-case scenario. “If I didn’t turn and try to get my glove up, they say I probably would’ve died.”
“It was her scream that got to me,” says the pitchers mother, Deborah LB Kearn, a teacher at Alice M. Birney Elementary. “She got hit, and I ran away… I walked behind the bathroom and vending machine and just fell down. Honestly, my womb hurt. I’m so lucky, we’re so lucky, that my dad and Ashley’s dad were there that day.”
The 2009 season was obviously over for the hurler, but Betance-Kearn says the thought of not walking back into the circle never crossed her mind, and the first step on the road back was a trip to Play It Again Sports in Long Beach. It was there that mother bought daughter an imperative piece of $40 equipment: The Game Face.
On the market for nine years now, the Game Face is a polycarbonate mask used in a variety of sports to protect athletes from serious facial and dental injuries. Polycarbonate is the same material bullet-proof glass is made of, but when Betance-Kearn put the protective gear on for the first time, she felt anything but invincible.
“I always used to laugh and make fun of girls who wore these things,” says Betance-Kearn of the equipment that doesn’t leave her glove’s side. Late 2009, she went back to the circle with the mask for the first time as a member of her Orange County travel softball team. “My coaches were very patient with me, because at first warming up was easy, but during the actual game it just didn’t feel right.”
Coming into her junior year as the Jackrabbit ace once again, Betance-Kearn admits to feeling “weird” with the mask on. Especially during the first game this year at Joe Rodgers against Wilson, she says the injury, “was on my mind. It was eerie.”
The discomfort was evident in her performance and the Jackrabbits lost big to the Bruins, 11-0. However, life is all about two things: second chances and overcoming adversity. Yesterday, Betance-Kearn took advantage of the first, and executed the second.
With mask securely fastened, she called her own pitches during a six-hit complete game and showed maturity and poise in the circle as a team leader in a 3-2 victory. And almost like a cherry on top, 366 days after near tragedy, how would this game end? In the seventh inning with the tying and winning runs in scoring position, Betance-Kearn fielded a hard hit comebacker and threw to first for the final out. Full circle.
This story of softball injury and redemption is special, but in no way unprecedented.
It seems like every softball season comes with a story about a pitcher who gets hit by a batted ball. Recently, a pitcher from El Toro was struck in the face and had to have a metal plate inserted in her forehead. She probably won’t play high school softball again, and she was wearing a mask.
It’s nothing new to call for sports rules to change in the name of athlete safety, but softball is a special case. This is a sport that changes rules for multiple reasons…
The orange safety bag that sits wide of first base. The courtesy runner. The extra innings that start with a runner on second base.
Effective August 1st this year, the National Federation of State High School Associations Softball Rules Committee will officially change the high school softball pitching distance from 40 to 43 feet, where the collegiate mark is.
As it stands, high school softball pitchers are not mandated to wear face protection like batters are, but it would please a lot of softball fans, coaches, and especially parents if they were. Keep in mind, there was a time NHL hockey goalies didn’t wear facemasks. Can you imagine that in today’s game?
Meanwhile, Betance-Kearn and the Jackrabbits are trying to be at their best as the playoffs arrive, but the junior has already learned and lived the lesson of sport: perseverance.
Here’s hoping high school sports writers don’t have to tell too many more stories like this in the near future.