Missing Milestones: Returning to the softball field after a season lost to COVID-19
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Missing Milestones
An occasional series on how COVID-19 is changing life for one Kentucky High School senior.
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Editor’s Note: This is the fourth story in an occasional series on how COVID-19 is changing life for one Kentucky High School senior.
From Macy Dungan’s vantage point on the pitcher’s mound, COVID-19 dissolved into a distant memory, if only for a moment.
The opposing team’s player in front of her, holding her bat aloft, was maskless. Macy could turn to look at any of her teammates dotting the softball diamond — none with masks, all fully preoccupied with beating Franklin County. Shouts from a blur of fans beyond the field lights ratcheted up the energy of the first Frankfort High School home softball game of the season.
It was easy to keep selective focus on the ball in her hand and the next pitch, without glancing beyond the fence behind home plate to see rows of parents and friends, masked and sitting apart, or to eye either dugout, where players were rattling the chain link fences, jumping and screaming through their masks.
“Let’s go, Mace!” one of her teammates shouted from the dugout. “Finish up, #3! I believe in you right here!”
The full count and the surround-sound screams didn’t seem to aggravate the 17-year-old’s concentration as she positioned herself on the mound, straightened her posture, cocked and swiveled her arm to deliver a final strike to end the inning.
It was March 30, and with less than two months left in her senior year at FHS, Macy was grateful to have a season at all. All high school sports in Kentucky were canceled last spring because of the pandemic, just as most K-12 schools went virtual.
When Frankfort High’s softball team started its season in March, 22 months had lapsed since their last game. Frankfort High students had only been granted permission to re-enter the school building in February, after a year hiatus of virtual learning. Macy and her family agreed to let the Herald-Leader document her final year at FHS to show how the virus, having trounced all sense of normalcy, is affecting a year of lasts and firsts for a teenager on the edge of adulthood.
Though she would get a senior season of her favorite sport, the rules were clear: “When you’re not on the field, you have to have a mask on,” head coach T.J. Gaines told them. “No ifs, ands or buts about it.”
Frankfort High’s softball field is on the edge of downtown, sandwiched between a towering wall of limestone and the state Cabinet for Justice and Public Safety parking lot. Crowd goers must wear a mask at all times when inside the stadium fences, and each player is limited to four fans apiece. Inside, there’s no wafting smell of popcorn or hot dogs; the concession stand has and will stay closed until next year’s season. Many parents opted to bring their own chairs to sit along either foul line, where it’s more spacious than the communal bleachers.
Macy started playing competitive softball as a 7-year-old, and she first played on the high school team as a fifth-grader. In eighth grade, when she started to pitch, she suffered an ankle injury. She powered through the pain, only to learn later in the season she’d aggravated the injury to such a degree that she’d always be prone to ankle sprains. No matter; she persisted anyway, this season with an ankle brace.
As the starting pitcher and one of three captains (she’s been captain since her sophomore year), Macy in many ways is the nucleus of her team. She’s not especially emotive on the mound or in the dugout, where she took her seat as her teammates put on helmets and readied for the batting lineup. While some of her fellow players guffawed, heckled and cussed in low voices at the other team, Macy sat on the bench quietly watching her opponents field grounders. It was the top of the fifth inning.
The other team’s pitcher threw a low ball over home plate, and the umpire called a strike.
“Hey, you’re good babe, that wasn’t you!” one of Macy’s teammates shouted. Then, to the umpire, “I mean, I don’t think we’re golfing, but, you know, shit.”
Everyone giggled, including Macy. If her teammates get too out of hand with the cussing and heckling in earshot of the umpires or coaches, she usually takes it upon herself to lightheartedly step in.
“I’m normally the bad cop,” she said. “I say, ‘Shhh, you can’t be doing that.” But it’s only because she’s been told by her coaches and her dad, “‘If you cuss and get thrown out, I’m not helping you, and you’re going to be out three games.’ So that’s kind of how I go at that,” she said dryly.
The adults around Macy know her to be reliable and mature, but not in a way that alienates her from the rest of her senior class. She recently offered, somewhat in jest, to make “hangover packets” to dole out to her classmates the morning after senior prom while people load the bus for their class trip to King’s Island.
“I’ll bring them to the bus so you don’t have to worry about that,” she offered to a teacher. “They might be sick, but they’ll be throwing up in a bag.”
Her everyday demeanor is calm and even-keeled. When the school year commenced in August, Macy steeled herself against the reality that COVID-19 would likely dilute most of the meaningful experiences and rituals she’d anticipated since her freshman year. Both her fall and winter homecomings, for instance, happened over a computer screen.
Her fall cheerleading season unfolded in fits and starts, interrupted by bouts of quarantine because girls were exposed to or contracted COVID-19. Macy, herself, was forced into quarantine late last year, twice, before vaccines were widely available.
Much of this year has been unpredictable — if and when students could return to in-person class, which extracurriculars would be allowed, and whether culminating end-of-the-year events like prom and senior week would happen at all.
So, when it was announced she would have a softball season, “It wasn’t like I was crazy excited about it,” she said. “Just because [there’s] not much excitement this year. But it was nice to have a little bit more of normalcy. I wish it was under better circumstances.”
Frankfort High’s softball season has yet to be interrupted by coronavirus — so far, no players have had to quarantine. And now that she and many of her teammates have gotten the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, all signs point to it finishing in late May without a hitch.
The seventh inning came, and Franklin County widened its lead over Frankfort High, 7-4. FHS had the last at-bat, and when the final batter struck out, some of the girls groaned from the bench at the loss. Others hung their heads.
Coach Gaines asked his players to follow him to left field. They sat in the grass as the junior varsity team warmed up.
He lowered his mask. “Look, I’m proud of y’all. I’m sorry, I am,” he said warmly. “Win or lose, y’all gave it everything you had. You can walk around with your heads held high.”
To Be Continued: Our Missing Milestones series will continue with occasional installments throughout the 2020-21 school year.
This story was originally published May 19, 2021 at 10:57 AM.
