Bad break can’t dent Cheyenne senior’s will

Rachel Holly should be enjoying her senior season, pitching, hitting and running on Cheyenne’s softball team.

Twice a second-team all-state selection, Holly should be honing her game and preparing to play in college.

Instead, Holly, arguably one of the valley’s best outfielders, sits in the dugout unable to play but still looking for every opportunity to help a young Desert Shields team improve.

Holly is missing her senior season because of a fractured L5 vertebra in her back, an injury that has gotten progressively worse since her freshman year and one that took two doctors and many months to find.

“It is incredibly, incredibly difficult. It’s hard to watch and not be out there on the field,” said Holly, who wears a protective plastic shell around her midsection except when she sleeps. “Not being able to help my team out and not being able to play the game I love is difficult.”

Holly first felt something wrong with her back during her freshman year. She aggravated the injury while sliding during a game in her sophomore season but continued to play.

The opening weekend of her junior year, Holly injured her back again. “That was when I really felt it and heard it pop,” she said.

Afraid to let her team down, she played through the pain and didn’t see a doctor until three weeks later. Incredibly, she was told it was just a muscle strain.

“They just kept telling me it was muscular, so I figured that I saw everybody else playing through it, I just needed to suck it up and play, too,” she said.

An X-ray didn’t appear to show any break.

“The first doctor she went to, I think he misdiagnosed it 100 percent,” said Bill Holly, Rachel’s father. “He was having her do therapy. If you break your leg, you don’t take your cast off and do therapy. You immobilize it and let it heal.

“If we would have gotten a better diagnosis from a doctor, we would have stopped her from playing right away.”

Holly insisted she wanted to play.

“I knew I wasn’t 100 percent, but I still tried to go out there and give it everything I could,” she said. “I could feel it. It would tighten up and I could hardly move, so I just had one of the coaches go out and stretch me.”

And so the girl who couldn’t tie her shoes because of the pain kept playing. And kept hitting. And hitting.

Eventually, the pain became too much for her to pitch, so Cheyenne coach Teri Hernandez moved Holly to the outfield. Holly finished the season hitting .521 with 10 doubles, six triples, a home run and 19 RBIs — with a broken back.

“To hit .500 at honestly probably 50 percent ... she’s in tears every game,” Hernandez said. “She’s mad at me if I pull her out of a game. Some girls are out there just going through the motions, but when Rachel stepped on the field, everyone knew. She commanded what she did out there.

“I struggled with keeping her out there, and I struggled with keeping her on the bench because I knew how valuable she was even at 50 percent. However, to this day, I feel so much responsibility that maybe I caused it because I sent her out there.”

After the season, Holly saw another doctor and underwent an MRI examination.

“We found out there was discoloration on the bone,” she said. “They did a CT scan later, and we finally got the results back on that on June 9. That’s when it showed two fractures of the L5 vertebra.”

Holly was fitted for a back brace and told the injury could heal within three months. That didn’t happen.

“They took another CT scan, and it was still broken,” she said. “At this point, it’s been 10 months since we found out I broke it, and I’m still in my turtle shell.”

The good news is, it appears to be healing. Holly still feels pain when she stands or sits for long periods, but little things are becoming easier to manage. Results of more tests Holly underwent last week are due back early next week.

“I can see the progression finally in the last few months,” Bill Holly said. “She’s tying her own shoes. She’s moving better.”

The one thing that has stayed constant, though, is Holly’s commitment to her team.

The Desert Shields badly miss her. They are 3-19 this season, playing with mainly freshmen and sophomores.

“One of the hardest things for me is that with this young team, they don’t get the chance to see her play,” Hernandez said. “With Rachel on the field, it’s a different team, because they follow her lead.

“It just kills me that this girl that has so much desire to play can’t play. It absolutely kills me.”

Hernandez invited Holly to be the team’s manager. To go from being a star player to a behind the scenes role isn’t easy for most, but she has handled it brilliantly.

“It’s so difficult for us this year, but the fact that she continues to come out and help is just amazing,” Hernandez said. “Still having her presence out there, because she’s constantly in the dugout talking to the girls, is great. I know it’s hard for her to watch. It’s so weird hearing her talking behind me, but she’s constantly trying to build these girls up.”

And though Hernandez would much rather have Holly patrolling center field and driving in runs, she couldn’t ask for a better person to help mold her team.

“She’s my number one,” Hernandez said. “The heart, the ability to never talk back. She takes it all in and works on it. She has definitely been the best player that I have seen come through Cheyenne.”

Holly gives her teammates tips during games, picks up on little things coaches don’t see and helps in any way she can, hoping maybe one day she can play again.

“I would love to go to college and become a physical therapist,” she said. “If it does heal, I would maybe be able to get back into softball and try to walk on. I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

“I would love to be out there. I would give anything to be back out there, but at the same time, I know that even if I’m not playing, I’ll still be out there helping out in some way.”