A torn ACL had threatened Hayley Griggs’ dreams of playing top-level college softball. The Florida State University commit sits down with Sporting Her’s Jeff Cheshire to discuss her long road to recovery and recruitment.
Hayley Griggs shared a look with her mother. The clock had just hit midnight. It was September 1. And the calls began coming, from all over the United States, just as you would expect for one of the top-rated recruits in the class of 2025. It did not take long for the one she wanted more than any other to pop up, either.
A message came through from Florida State University at 12.30am. Fifteen minutes later she was on a Zoom call to the programme she would eventually commit to. Yet it meant so much more than that to the Perrysburg High School junior. She went into the night ranked by Extra Innings as the 10th-equal overall player and fourth middle-infielder in the class. But there was a time not so long ago, in the depths of her year-long anterior cruciate ligament recovery, when she had not known what this night would look like.
”It was just seriously crazy,” Griggs recalls, as she sits on a Zoom call in her Ohio home, three months on from September 1. ”I was sitting on my couch and it was 11.59pm. It hit midnight and I just looked at my mom and I was like ‘well’. I had head coaches calling me. I was overwhelmed with all the excitement. All the hard work you’ve put into it, just seeing the results is seriously awesome. My injury for me, going through all that, I was kind of like ‘I don’t know where I’m going to be in the future’, because I missed a whole year of recruiting. But seeing my hard work and my progress come through, it was truly amazing. It’s just starting to hit me with that I went through probably the worst thing I could have gone through. It’s just a great accomplishment for me, to be able to get over that injury and come back better than I was before.”
It was little under two years ago that all nearly came crashing down. Griggs was fouled as she went up for a layup, playing for the Perrysburg High School basketball team. A defender had hit her right at the same moment as she jumped off the ground. The then-freshman point guard, in just her fourth game for the team, felt a pop in her knee.
”It didn’t really hit me exactly [then],” she said. “It hit me when I got into the trainer’s room, and I was like ‘oh this is actually serious. Nothing exactly hit me until I realised I’m seriously going to be out for a year and a half’, or however long it ended up being. It was all the emotions, every emotion you can think of, honestly.”
She had surgery a few weeks later, before beginning the road back. Over time, the reality of how long that road would be began to set in. It meant sitting out not just the remainder of the basketball season, but both her high school and travel softball seasons. It meant a long and painful rehabilitation programme, wearing a brace, months of limited range of motion and ”basically learning how to do everything again”. It also meant missing out on the beginning of the window where colleges really begin to recruit their prospects seriously. But that goal of being recruited never wavered, and ultimately it was what helped keep her going.
”It was hard,” she said of the recovery process. “There was a lot of nights where I came back [from physical therapy] and I was like, ‘it’s not working out’. You’ve got to push through, and it’s painful. The rehab was more painful than the injury itself. You’ve got to rework it, I don’t know if that makes sense. It was just getting over that pain and mentally trying to focus on my goal of coming back and getting recruited. Trying to focus on the future, rather than the present.”
Amongst it all, she did what she could for her team. She continued to sit on the bench and be a voice for the remainder of the basketball season. When softball came around, it began to feel more real that she would be sitting out that season too. Being a freshman, she had not played for the team before, and not having an on-field role, she admitted to feeling out of place. So it became a case of finding her place.
”I would do everything I could. If we had to roll balls for glove work, I would roll balls. I would feed, I would pick up balls, I would shag. It was doing the little things I could to help my team as much as I could, without actually being there. I was just assisting the coaches as much as I could to make everything go a little bit easier. That was basically my role for freshman year.
. . . It’s not bad when everything’s going good. But when everything’s going bad, it’s like ‘I wish I was out there so I could do something’. But you can only do so much, especially when you’re hurt too. Trying to use my words, instead of being physically there.”
Then, as her recovery improved, after months of meticulous and disciplined rehabilitation, she began easing her way back. She started hitting again before anything, progressing into doing anything that did not involve her legs, before finally working her way back to travel ball for last year’s fall season. Her first few tournaments she was on limited game time, while also being impacted by her limited range of motion. Very quickly, she found her groove again, and was back into it on a full-time basis. Aside from anything else, just being on the field was special in itself and she had to adjust her perfectionist mindset.
”It hit me when I first went out on the field. I was like ‘wow I’m actually playing softball, I haven’t done this in forever’. I kind of forgot what it felt like.
”But it’s just awesome. The rush of emotions when you’re out on the field, the feeling of being supported by your team mates and your coaches, and everyone around you, it’s awesome.
”. . . My first at bat, I was kind of just focusing on just making contact. Not exactly, I did some live pitching before, but I wasn’t fully back. I was just focusing on alright just take it easy, don’t be mad at yourself, you haven’t played this sport in a year.
“You have to mentally be like ‘okay, it’s fine’, kind of thing. It was more mentally harder for me. I’m a perfectionist when I play softball. So I had to be like, you’re not going to be perfect, and just building on that.”
And build on that she did. When she finally stepped on to the diamond in Perrysburg colours earlier this year, an historic season followed. In 28 games she scored a record 48 runs, posted 53 hits, 40 RBIs, 10 home runs and 12 stolen bases, at a record batting average of 0.546. She hit three home runs in one game, to match the feat achieved by her sister, University of Pittsburgh junior utility Kylie Griggs, when she was at Perrysburg. In the field she was similarly proficient, a quick look at her highlight film showing the athleticism, skill and rocket arm to throw out runners at first base. It left her to be named All-District, All-League and All-State.
Around that she was in full-on camp mode, attending recruiting camps at colleges and making herself known, especially to Florida State. She also looked to make as much of a splash as she could over the summer travel ball season. Her class shone through and she shot up the ranking boards. While the injury may have been a set back physically, it could not take away one of her most notable attributes, her competitiveness. That comes from growing up in a sporting family, notably being pushed by Kylie, who she credits as one of the hardest workers she knows.
”I’ve always grown up just trying to be better than everyone. If I’m competing against someone I’m always trying to be better than them. In softball whether it’s competing against yourself to be better than you were in your last at bat, or competing against the pitcher, or whoever hits the ground ball at you, it’s trying to be your best at all times and trying to beat everybody I feel like. I’ve always grown up on it and I’ve been taught to be competitive. It’s just trying to be my best at all times and being better.”
For now she is in the middle of another basketball season, having not been dissuaded by her injury. On the other side of the new year, she will likely spend some extra time in front of the television too, as college softball gets back under way.
“I’m going to be cheering on the ‘Noles. I think it’s going to. be different now, because I can see it through a different point of view, now I know where I’m going. I can put myself in that, seeing the atmosphere and everything that softball has created.”
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