In today’s edition of This Hits Different, Shelby Cassesse tells the story of Thomas Jefferson grad Haleigh Karcher, who overcame a gruesome injury to help her college softball team to the World Series.
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TJ grad overcomes gruesome injury to star on diamond
In the summer of 2019, Haleigh Karcher was just a few days from graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School and preparing for her collegiate softball career as a catcher at West Chester.
She and her friend Alanna Lynch were at Peter's Creek, a local swimming hole with a rope swing.
Haleigh leaped to the water gripping the rope, but quickly lost control.
"The rope just made a coil from the tension," Karcher said. "It was like the freakiest thing, and that little tiny coil snagged me in the air. When it snagged me, it pulled hard on my hand, and then pulled me back up. I was probably 20-30 feet in the air."
She went head first into the water, and initially thought she broke her wrist. Lynch's reaction though, indicated it was much worse.
"She was like, 'don't look down,'" Karcher explained. "And, you know how everyone says, 'don't look down,' and the first think you do is look."
Some of Karcher's fingers on her left hand were either partially or fully gone. Lynch wrapped Karcher's hand with her swimsuit cover-up and called 911.
The girls started a harrowing two mile walk back to the main road. Karcher eventually just wanted to close her eyes.
"And she just slapped me, right across the face," Karcher said.
First responders told Lynch that slap could have saved Karcher's life because of the blood loss. At the hospital, doctors scrambled, while friends and family rushed to her side. But Karcher couldn't help but think what this meant for softball.
"I need to know if I'm going to play softball," Karcher asked the doctors. "(They said) You can't really worry about softball right now, we're trying to keep you alive. There's priorities. And I was like, 'no, you don't understand.'"
Even in the first days of her recovery, Karcher exceeded expectations. She walked at graduation and was soon re-learning how to swing a bat. Still, doctors weren't hopeful.
"The plastic surgeons, after my surgery, were like, 'there's no shot, you're done, it's done and over with,'" she said. "And I was like, 'no, you're wrong.'"
Much like her approach to softball, Karcher hit therapy hard. She worked with specialists to design equipment to help her hold a bat and catch. Through trial and error, they found a batting aid that worked.
"It velcros to each other buy kind of slips over my hand," Karcher said. "And then there's a titanium, reinforced steel, picture frame hook that's custom to the bat, so it just slides in and, when I swing, it just stays in place."
It was approved by the NCAA, and Karcher cut the finger separators out of her glove to catch. She went to college on time, and batted for the fall season. That spring, the pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt, except for Karcher's progress.
"I feel like I'm always learning until now," she said. "And especially with covid hitting, that gave us a window of opportunity to be like, 'okay, I have almost a full year of (learning) how to develop this better."
By the time softball returned in 2021, Karcher was much more comfortable with her new approach to the game. Halfway through the season, she started her first game, a role that was hers for the rest of the year, all the way to a PSAC championship and the NCAA DII World Series.
"Would it have been nice to have come home with a national championship? Yeah," she said. "But I'm not going to be made that we won everything else, made it to the World Series, and just lost there. That was amazing. I was like, 'we did it.' And these girls have had my back."
Karcher's softball career is far from over as junior, but she's also studying to be a nurse. She hopes to work with kids who use prosthetics, and be role model for overcoming even the scariest and most difficult challenges.
"Just keep working hard and believing in yourself and having your support and believing in your faith, what you want," Karcher said. "And knowing that, if you want it bad enough, you're going to get it."