Unfinished business: Bald Eagle Area softball seniors miss out on a chance at redemption
Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a series chronicling some of the biggest missed storylines of the 2020 spring high school sports season in Centre County.
Maralee Caldana couldn’t believe the news when she heard it. Her senior softball season wasn’t supposed to end like this.
She was supposed to make another run to the state finals with her teammates. They were supposed to have a chance for retribution. There were supposed to be tears of joy flowing down her face as her Bald Eagle Area career came to a close, with any luck, back in the state championship final.
The tears were the one constant between the ending Caldana envisioned and the one a harsh reality dealt her in its stead. But those weren’t tears of joy. They were tears of heartbreak and frustration.
“My mother was the first person I talked to,” Caldana said. “We cried together. She’s really emotional about this because she was so excited to see me play my last year in high school.”
Caldana couldn’t believe the news when she first heard it from fellow senior Lauren Fisher, who broke the news to her teammate with a text.
“She texted me and she’s like, ‘Oh no, our season just ended,’”Caldana said. “It was a shock to me. We were so prepared. We were really ready to take on the season. It’s crazy how it just ended and I won’t have another year with the rest of the team.
Caldana and Fisher are the softball team’s only players set to graduate and leave the team this year without any sense of finality. They will never get the opportunity to make up for their 7-3 loss, after leading 3-1 heading into the sixth, to unbeaten Pine Grove in the PIAA state finals as juniors.
The hardest part, they said, is not knowing what could have been.
“We were ready to come back this season,” Caldana said. “I just want to know what would’ve happened if we were to play. It would have been amazing to find out if we could have won states. I want to know who we could’ve beaten, if we could’ve gone undefeated. It’s all of those what-ifs. It’s going to be in the back of my mind for a while.”
The frustration and sadness were evident in Caldana’s voice, her voice quivering with frequent pauses as she pondered the wide range of outcomes about what could have been. She admits she still hasn’t completely wrapped her head around the way this ended, and knows she may never fully get past it.
Fisher felt that denial immediately, trying to comprehend the news she’d just absorbed when the spring sports season was canceled by the PIAA due to safety concerns surrounding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“I didn’t really want to accept the fact that it was over,” Fisher said. “We already practiced for a month. I never expected it to happen like that.”
While Caldana shared tears with her mother, Fisher reached out to Bald Eagle Area head coach Don Lucas to express her gratitude for his coaching and mentorship.
“I just thanked him for everything,” she said. “He was just amazing. He made the team what it was and we wouldn’t have been what we were without him. I thanked him and told him I can’t imagine never playing with him again.”
Lucas felt for the two seniors when the news arrived, but didn’t want them to leave the moment without taking the opportunity to teach them an important life lesson.
“I told them it’s a tough part of life,” Lucas said. “As coaches, I’ve always felt that when we coach we better offer (athletes) more than just our sport. This is the tough part of life, the things we have no control over. We just have to make the best of it and move forward because it’s all we can do. … This is an opportunity to grasp that nothing is for sure. If you have an opportunity to play and walk on the field, you’ve really got to take advantage of that and be thankful that you can do it.”
Still, he grieved for the opportunities they lost when the cancellation came.
He knew they wouldn’t have the chance to take the field with their teammates one last time. He knew the talent the team had and thought he had a chance to help send his seniors out on top of the PIAA softball world. The lost chance to finish what they started will linger with Lucas, who had already preached the theme for the 2019-20 season.
“It’s so tough to get back to the big show,” Lucas said about making the state title game. “Our theme for this coming year was ‘unfinished business’ and they all embodied it. … They wanted to get back on the field to prove (themselves).”
Their high school careers finished, but with no finished business, the two seniors will now move on to the next phase of their softball careers. Caldana and Fisher are both set to play the sport in college, at Grove City College and Juniata College, respectively.
They’ll begin their next chapters while the one prior is left with an unwritten conclusion, leaving only wisps of what could have been lingering in their minds.
Lucas is hopeful the seniors can learn something from the heartbreaking end to their time with the Bald Eagle Area softball team. He said he wants them to focus on what they can control and do the best they can in the opportunities under their control.
After all, not all stories have a tidy conclusion, or a heartwarming ending.
They don’t all get wrapped up with a bow.
Sometimes they just end.
This story was originally published May 16, 2020 at 4:15 PM.
