FARMVILLE, Va. -- Rebecca Huitt/Bealeton, Va. was about five when she began to play T-ball as the only girl on her baseball team in Fauquier County.
On the first day of practice, her coach told the boys to take it easy when throwing the ball to Huitt. But after watching her play, the next day the coach told teammates to treat her the same as everyone else on the team.
“I have always been, like, the tough one,” said Huitt, now a walk-on freshman outfielder/catcher on the Longwood softball team. “My (two older) sisters would beat up on me when we were younger. They wanted me to take care of myself.”
Those harmless childhood encounters could hardly prepare Huitt for what happened to her October 13, 2011. But her fearless, never-give-up attitude, on and off the field, has gotten even stronger after she was severely injured in a one-car accident in rural Culpeper County on her way to Liberty High School in Fauquier in the fall of her senior year one dreary, overcast morning.
“We had just moved to a new area and it was out in the middle of nowhere,” said the diminutive, 5-foot Huitt, sitting in a conference room at Tabb Hall before a practice last month. “I hit a puddle and ran into a tree. I hit it straight on, a straight shot.”
“I left home about 6:50 and it was about 7:10 when it happened,” added Huitt, who was on the field hockey team at Liberty High at the time. “A lot of people looking at my car couldn't believe a person was in it.”
Rescue personnel were not able to get Huitt out of the car on the driver's side so they used a Jaw of Life to take her out via the trunk.
“I don't remember much. I don't remember impact,” she said. “I remember waking up and one of the rescue people was in the passenger's side and was talking to me. I actually answered a phone call from a person I was to pick up (for school).”
“I tried to move and something was not right,” she added. “They thought both of my legs were broken because of the big cut they saw on my right leg. Then I passed out. They drove me to the Culpeper hospital, which was the closest hospital.”
Huitt said she threw up a few times while she was taken to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
“I was allergic to the morphine they were giving me. I don't remember anything from Culpeper. I woke up on the table in Charlottesville,” she added.
Huitt's femur in her left leg was broken in three places and she had a deep tissue wound in her right leg, which was cut down to the muscle. She had a grade 4 liver laceration and eventually had to get 50 staples in her head. She now has two noticeable scars on her head.
Surgery was done Oct. 14, the day after the accident, in Charlottesville and she was there for about a week in the ICU.
Huitt was in a wheelchair for about six weeks, even though she missed just two weeks of school. After spending time in a wheelchair, she spent about eight weeks on crutches.
By the time Huitt started going back to school, the field hockey season was over. She played basketball her first three years at Liberty High, but the accident left her on the sidelines as a de facto manager her senior year.
But she was ready for the softball season in the spring of 2012, even though her surgeon, travel softball coaches and even her mother cautioned against high expectations of returning to the field so soon - or ever - after the accident.
“She had a lot of determination,” said her mother, Beth Ann Childress. “It was her senior year of high school and she really wanted to play softball, even through the accident. She had a grade 4 liver laceration, which gave her quite a bit of bleeding on the inside. She had surgery on both legs: one was to fix the break in the left leg and the other was to fix the gash in the right leg.”
Huitt, who was wearing a seat belt, never learned who called rescue personnel after the accident.
“We prayed every night. I think a lot of faith had (a lot) to do with it,” Childress said. “She sat in ice baths at school after she would finish practice in softball. She would come home and still be cold.”
Huitt was an all-district outfielder as a junior and repeated that honor as a senior, even after the accident.
She had always dreamed of playing college softball, and had been in touch with Longwood head coach
Kathy Riley before the car accident.
Huitt also applied to Arizona State and James Madison, but said she would not have tried to play softball at those schools. After the accident, Longwood players sent a note of encouragement to Huitt when she was still in high school, according to Riley.
Riley has used Huitt as a reserve/bullpen catcher in the early part of this season. The veteran coach said Huitt has been invaluable, as she warms up the starting pitcher in the bullpen and sometimes between innings. That allows starting catcher
Megan Baltzell, a No. 3 hitter who hit .459 with 12 homers through 26 games this season, a chance to catch her breath after running the bases.
But Huitt made her college debut as an outfielder on Feb. 21 in a win at home against St. Francis (PA), as she was hitless in one at bat. Since that time, she has appeared in three other games as a pinch runner, scoring two runs.
“I could see her getting more innings as an outfielder than as a catcher,” Riley said. “She naturally judges the ball pretty well” as an outfielder.
Huitt is the youngest of three girls and both of her older sisters played three sports, including softball, at Liberty High.
“It is pretty awesome when you think the kid weighs about 114 pounds and catches every day” in the bullpen during games and at practice, Riley added. “For her to get back there and put in one and half hours every day is pretty amazing. She is a tough kid when it comes to her pain threshold.”
For that Huitt can thank her sisters, who toughened her up when she was younger.
Editor's Note: Special consultant David Driver is a Virginia native and has covered college sports in the state for more than 20 years. He has been a staff writer for newspapers in Arlington, Springfield and Harrisonburg and has contributed to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Washington Post, Stafford County Sun and The Potomac News in Woodbridge. He was also the first sports editor for the daily Baltimore Examiner. He will continue contributing special feature content to longwoodlancers.com throughout the upcoming 2012-13 academic year as well. A former Division III baseball player at Eastern Mennonite University, David can be reached at www.davidsdriver.com.
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