Vanderzyl back in the softball lineup after auto accident

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Vanderzyl back in the softball lineup after auto accident

Sports

Friday, 29 July 2011 13:38

News-Gazette Photo/Andrew Sullivan

Harmony’s Breann Vanderzyl pauses before a pitch last season before she was seriously injured in an auto accident.

By Rick Pedone
Sports Editor
Breann Vanderzyl promised that she would soon return to the softball field, but now, already?
Less than three months after suffering serious injuries in an auto accident, Breezy, as she’s known to her Harmony High teammates, was a designated hitter for her travel ball team, the Brevard Stealers West, at a Rising Stars exposure tournament at Plantation last weekend.
“It was incredible,” Stealers Manager Vinnie Fernandez said. “She got up there, and in her first at-bat, she gets a single and drives in a run. The kids were going crazy. In all my years of coaching, it was the most incredible thing I’ve seen.”
Vanderzyl, who will be a senior, downplayed the significance of her return to the diamond.
“It’s a little bit embarrassing,” she said of the attention she received.
And, she added, she didn’t exactly powder the ball on that first hit.
“It was like a high pop that they just didn’t catch,” she said. “It was almost like (the movie) ‘Angels in the Outfield.’ It felt good to be back on the team. I said that’s what I was going to do.”
Fernandez said Vanderzyl was 4-for-8 over the weekend.
“She’s not at the point yet where she can do a lot of running or pitching, so for now she is DH-ing,” he said. “But, I’m just thrilled that she’s out there. I’ve been coaching her since she was 9; I consider her like a daughter. It’s hard to describe how happy I am – we all are – to see her out there, doing so well.”
Vanderzyl suffered a broken femur and several broken ribs during the April 27 accident that happened just off campus minutes after the Longhorns beat Dunnellon in the regional quarterfinals. Her friend, Harmony pitcher A.J. Stevens, also was injured, but not as seriously. Both were hospitalized. After four days, Vanderzyl was released. Only six days after the accident, her father, Derek, took her to Harmony where she wished the team well when it boarded the bus to play in the regional finals at Dade City.
She went to the state tournament in Clermont less than two weeks after the accident to watch the Longhorns win the semifinal against Braden River before the team lost to Eau Gallie for the championship.
Vanderzyl, on crutches, was able to go on the field to receive a state runner-up medal.
She goes to therapy three days a week and practices hitting and pitching most days, she said. Her brother, Brent, a former wrestler at Gateway and now a student at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, helped her during her initial phase of therapy.
“I feel pretty good. I’d say I’m about 80 percent back,” she said. “My trainers say that I should be 100 percent by September.”
Lynn Vanderzyl, her mother, said Breezy has soreness in her shoulder and in her hip, where a rod was implanted to help her leg fracture heal.
“Sometimes we worried about her pushing herself too hard,” Lynn Vanderzyl said. “That’s the way she is. It really was exciting to see her playing last weekend; it was something that we really didn’t expect to happen so soon. But, knowing the way she has been working so hard at it, we weren’t surprised.”
Breezy said she is making slow, steady progress in the pitching circle. She can throw her fastball and she is starting to work on her spin pitches. She expects to be pitching at another Rising Stars tournament in October.
Fernandez said college coaches have expressed interest in Vanderzyl despite her injuries.
“They’ve seen her before, they know the type of player that she is,” Fernandez said. “She’ll play (in college) somewhere.”
Vanderzyl batted .341 for Harmony before her injury and was 7-5 with a 1.58 ERA on the mound, good enough to be a first-team Class 4A all-state selection by Miracle Sports. She was the News-Gazette co-Player of the Year in 2010 with Osceola High’s Alexa Ballard.
The accident has changed her, she said, and it has helped her make career plans.
“I’m definitely a different person. I see things differently now,” she said. “I’m thinking about a career in medicine. After seeing the way the nurses acted when I was hurt, how efficient and helpful they were, I want to be a nurse.”
But, for now, she is a 17-year-old high school student looking forward to her senior year. She has no qualms about driving.
“No, I don’t even think about it. I don’t remember anything, nothing at all, about what happened,” she said.
Her mother, on the other hand, gets nervous when she sees her daughter leave.
“Not so much during the day, but at night, I worry,” Lynn Vanderzyl said.
Harmony will be a favorite in the new Class 7A next season with six returning state tournament starters. Mike Clark replaced Ralph King as the head coach.
“I haven’t talked to (Clark), but I’ve heard a lot of things about him. It’s going to be exciting,” she said. “I’m going to be ready, for sure.”