By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

DAYTON, Ore.–  The excitement of just being back on the diamond was evident for incoming Cascade Junior Cassidy Crabtree coming off of her first several games back from a torn ACL and Meniscus a few months ago.

June 6 was Crabtree’s first game back, playing the NW Dirtbags 16U travel ball team when the Summer Travel Softball season kicked off.  And from there, from the tournaments going into Wednesday’s scrimmage at Dayton High School against the MVP 18U squad, it was a sigh of relief in knowing that all of her hard work paid off to get her back to this point this Summer.

“Oh it was so good, I was so happy.  Oh I was so happy.  I love my team, I love cheering them on, but nothing was actually better than actually going to go do it again.  It almost brought me to tears,” starts Crabtree.  “I’m so happy just to get to do it again.

” “I’ve been practicing and stuff, but to actually go full-speed at practice is nice.  And finally to go full-speed and games and stuff, slowly my way back until I didn’t even miss a game.”

The injury occurred when Crabtree, preparing for her sophomore year of basketball with the Cougars, was playing in a game to get some reps and trying to get into basketball shape for try-outs and the possible season ahead.  A bang-bang play with a girl on the court during the game had caused the injury and made the two-sport athlete miss both the basketball and softball seasons.

The Cascade girls basketball team finished third in 4A while the Cougar softball team won the Oregon West Conference Title and reached the 4A playoffs while Crabtree was healing up and going through the healing process.

Sports has meant a lot for Crabtree, so you can imagine how much it pained her and was eating her up inside to know she couldn’t be out there with her team.  Mentally, it was as taxing as she went through the grueling process of the Physical Therapy post-operation.

“It’s so hard.  It was so hard, but honestly God helped me through and I got closer to Him.  I think that helped me the most because I knew I couldn’t do it on my own,” Crabtree said. “(Sports) have been my whole world, I haven’t done anything else.  I’ve put my every, every thing I’ve had into it and to have it taken away, I got to express myself in other ways and learned different things about myself.”

In Wednesday’s scrimmage, Crabtree went 2-for-4.  Sophie Jackson and West Salem’s Courtney Gills each collected four hits..  Gills and Maddy Dean each drove in 3RBI’s for the Dirtbags.  Scio’s Meagan Trissel collected two hits and drove in a run for the MVP squad with Dayton’s Racheal Baumholtz striking out three pitching.  Isabelle Arthur also struck out three pitching for MVP.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald