My husband and I would like to thank our softball community for the outstanding support and prayers for our daughter Shelby.  Shelby has a couple of small hairline skull fractures, concussion and one big black eye.  She will however recover from all of her injuries in time. We feel very lucky and realize that Shelby’s injuries could have been a lot worse.  We feel that if Shelby would have been wearing a face mask these injuries would have been minimum.  And, not wearing her face mask was a poor dicision on our part and not anyone elses.  At the end of the day, we are all responsible for our kids, not the coaches, the leagues or the parks.  Our 12 year old daugher Haley, pitches for 14u and growing up she never wore a face mask.  But, with the ongoing technology of the new bats today, it makes reaction times to line drives harder and harder.  So, as concerned parents for the safety of our young daughters, they will wear face masks from now until 18u.  It will be at this point that we will allow our girls to make that decision themselves.  

 

We would also like to touch on the little girl from TPS that hit the ball.  Jaden, her mother and the TPS coaches visited Shelby in the hospital and have called checking on her throughout this ordeal.  This meant a lot to Shelby and to us and we would like to say a big Thank You to them as well.  I was told that after the game, our team and the TPS team joined together at the pitchers mound and wrote Shelby’s name in the sand and said a prayer for her.  This was very touching and makes us very proud of our softball community.

 

As for Shelby’s take on all this, she wants to continue to play softball and can’t wait to pitch again.  And, she says that the first person she wants to pitch to is Jaden because Shelby says that Jaden needs to know that it’s ok to bat again and not be scared too.  She says, “If I can pitch, she can bat.”

 

Our sincerest thanks for your prayers,

Mike and Monica Mathis