It’s senior week. Just another day of practice, and everyone’s rolling into the locker room to get changed. Ugh, not another day at practice. As everyone’s getting kitted up and ready to go, Coach comes rushing in. Something happened, something bad. The three of us (seniors) get called up to the office. Our girl, our roommate, our teammate, Tatiana, is sobbing in a chair. Her dad, a seasoned cop, has just been critically injured in the line of duty, and is being rushed to the hospital. Everyone goes into panic mode. We have to get her out of here and on the next flight home to be with him.

No one can focus on anything else for the rest of the week. We move on autopilot—through warm-ups, through hitting drills, through daily life. Every thought circles back to the same questions: How is her dad? How is Tater? She’s more than a teammate. She’s family. This isn’t real.

After a week of little contact, she’s back. Her dad has a severe spinal injury, and unknown to everyone at that time, he will be paralyzed in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Her dad is stable for the time being. She couldn’t let her teammates down at the end of the season, (she is our all star). She came back, and jumps straight into the Captain leadership position she so clearly earns each day. We have games to play. Our last game on our home field is around the corner. The field that her dad watched her play on for four years, the field where we all spent hours of practice together, the field we would play one of our last games at together. Senior Day. I remember that day so clearly, the emotion, the pain, the raw connection that was felt through Tater and our teammates out there. He was there in spirit that day. More than a hundred of his police brothers and sisters filled the stands. BC Softball dubbed it “Back The Blue Day” in support of the Cortez family.

I don’t remember much about that game, I don’t remember what I did, or what the other team did, but I do remember this… That day, Tater won the game for us by hitting a walk off homerun and it’s a moment and feeling I will never forget.

https://twitter.com/i/status/859045807491821572

While of course the walk off homer was epic, it was all the emotions I experienced for my teammate that day that will sear that memory in my heart forever. The bonds you make, the people who will be there for you, who you’ve faced the hardest challenges with, your teammates for life.

  • To Tater, you are quite possibly the one of the strongest people I have ever met. Thank you for going through the trenches with me. I love you. -Maddie