LarryD
04-22-03, 05:49 PM
Armed with sports: Playing fields prepared them for the battlefield|
By Lisa Olson
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Jessica Lynch struck out all the time. She could play the outfield just fine, her speed enabling her to cover ground where others couldn’t, and she loved to make those one-handed sliding catches that had players in both dugouts giggling and rolling their eyes.
When it was her turn to hit, though, everyone cringed. The sheer weight of the bat threatened to send her toppling into the dust. Jessie — that’s what everyone called her — was a sliver of a beam, 5-2 and 90-something pounds that made her seem as fragile as a glass figurine. In the box, her cap pulled low over those Bambi eyes, Jessie hacked and wacked at pitches, sometimes landing smack on her tush.
‘‘She couldn’t hit the ball at all. It drove her crazy,’’ said Rodney Watson, Lynch’s former softball coach at Wirt County High in Elizabeth, W.Va. ‘‘We normally DH’d for her, and boy would that make her mad.’’
The defining image Watson kept grasping during those dark days last month, when Lynch was held captive after Iraqi forces ambushed her Army supply convoy near Nasiriyah, was of Jesse, livid and determined, practicing her swing long after everyone else had gone home.
‘‘The last day of the season, she was still trying to hit the ball. There wasn’t any quit in her,’’ he said. ‘‘When I heard Jessie came storming out of her vehicle shooting her guns even after she was wounded, that didn’t shock me at all. She just wouldn’t give up.’’
Special Ops forces rescued Lynch, 19, from Saddam Hospital earlier this month, her legs, arm and spine fractured, the origin of her gunshot wounds still a mystery. Another woman from the same 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company with which Lynch served never survived that March 23 attack. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, was a hard-throwing, swift-footed All-Star, perhaps the best softball player ever to spring from the dusty diamonds of Tuba City, Ariz. She could do it all: pitch, steal bases, bat cleanup, turn a double play in one blinding motion, but mostly she had the innate ability to make her teammates believe in glorious possibilities even when they were losing by 10 runs in the bottom of the ninth.
‘‘She was amazing. The boys all wanted to play like her,’’ Adam Piestewa was saying the other day, shortly after his sister’s remains had been returned to the family’s stead. ‘‘Sports really helped Lori know she was special.’’
By now the studies are practically a cliche: Girls who participate in sports are less likely to take drugs, get pregnant, become entangled in abusive relationships, drop out of school, commit suicide. Sports can massage their self-esteem, their confidence, their survival skills.
Even after she had been shot, Private Lynch, by far the most petite soldier of the 507th, hauled a gun through hostile territory, emptying all her ammunition at Iraqi soldiers before being captured. Reports suggest Private Piestewa whispered detailed instructions to her fellow troops, even while she was dying in the barren desert.
Piestewa, a member of the Hopi Tribe and a third-generation U.S. soldier, is believed to be the first Native American woman killed in combat in a foreign war. Lynch, now recovering at home in the tiny hamlet of Palestine, W.Va., was the first U.S. prisoner to be rescued from behind enemy lines since World War II.
They were friends, both hailing from hardscrabble, impoverished rural towns on opposite sides of the continent. In downtime, under the scorching Iraq sun, Lynch the bubbly teen, would ask Piestewa, the quiet mother of two, for tips on how to hit the curve. The military pushed them into adulthood, offered security and a future. Sports provided a common link of resource, and of strength.
I wonder how often Piestewa thought of her favorite quote, uttered long ago by Wilma Rudolph, the U.S. track star and Olympic gold medalist, back in the days when women were thought to faint at the sight of blood and were forbidden from running marathons:
‘‘I ran and ran every day, and I acquired a sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never, give up, no matter what else happened.’’
Ever since Margaret Corbin hiked up her petticoats and replaced her fallen husband behind a cannon in the Revolution, American women have fought for their country. More than 200,000 women now serve in the U.S. armed forces, making up 15 percent of the enlisted ranks and the officer corps. Officials estimate 80 percent of them participated in high school sports. They fly combat missions, serve on fighter ships, follow their male counterparts into hostile territory.
Some of them, probably many of them, discovered hints of their true selves on dusty fields, just like Privates Lynch and Piestewa.
‘‘God, what a kid,’’ Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight said about Lynch. ‘‘If we had five of her, I don’t think we would lose to anybody.’’
She never could hit a curve. Watson, Lynch’s former coach, is pretty sure he’ll see Jessie one day soon, bat in hand, experimenting with the techniques an old friend once taught her.
By Lisa Olson
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Jessica Lynch struck out all the time. She could play the outfield just fine, her speed enabling her to cover ground where others couldn’t, and she loved to make those one-handed sliding catches that had players in both dugouts giggling and rolling their eyes.
When it was her turn to hit, though, everyone cringed. The sheer weight of the bat threatened to send her toppling into the dust. Jessie — that’s what everyone called her — was a sliver of a beam, 5-2 and 90-something pounds that made her seem as fragile as a glass figurine. In the box, her cap pulled low over those Bambi eyes, Jessie hacked and wacked at pitches, sometimes landing smack on her tush.
‘‘She couldn’t hit the ball at all. It drove her crazy,’’ said Rodney Watson, Lynch’s former softball coach at Wirt County High in Elizabeth, W.Va. ‘‘We normally DH’d for her, and boy would that make her mad.’’
The defining image Watson kept grasping during those dark days last month, when Lynch was held captive after Iraqi forces ambushed her Army supply convoy near Nasiriyah, was of Jesse, livid and determined, practicing her swing long after everyone else had gone home.
‘‘The last day of the season, she was still trying to hit the ball. There wasn’t any quit in her,’’ he said. ‘‘When I heard Jessie came storming out of her vehicle shooting her guns even after she was wounded, that didn’t shock me at all. She just wouldn’t give up.’’
Special Ops forces rescued Lynch, 19, from Saddam Hospital earlier this month, her legs, arm and spine fractured, the origin of her gunshot wounds still a mystery. Another woman from the same 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company with which Lynch served never survived that March 23 attack. Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, was a hard-throwing, swift-footed All-Star, perhaps the best softball player ever to spring from the dusty diamonds of Tuba City, Ariz. She could do it all: pitch, steal bases, bat cleanup, turn a double play in one blinding motion, but mostly she had the innate ability to make her teammates believe in glorious possibilities even when they were losing by 10 runs in the bottom of the ninth.
‘‘She was amazing. The boys all wanted to play like her,’’ Adam Piestewa was saying the other day, shortly after his sister’s remains had been returned to the family’s stead. ‘‘Sports really helped Lori know she was special.’’
By now the studies are practically a cliche: Girls who participate in sports are less likely to take drugs, get pregnant, become entangled in abusive relationships, drop out of school, commit suicide. Sports can massage their self-esteem, their confidence, their survival skills.
Even after she had been shot, Private Lynch, by far the most petite soldier of the 507th, hauled a gun through hostile territory, emptying all her ammunition at Iraqi soldiers before being captured. Reports suggest Private Piestewa whispered detailed instructions to her fellow troops, even while she was dying in the barren desert.
Piestewa, a member of the Hopi Tribe and a third-generation U.S. soldier, is believed to be the first Native American woman killed in combat in a foreign war. Lynch, now recovering at home in the tiny hamlet of Palestine, W.Va., was the first U.S. prisoner to be rescued from behind enemy lines since World War II.
They were friends, both hailing from hardscrabble, impoverished rural towns on opposite sides of the continent. In downtime, under the scorching Iraq sun, Lynch the bubbly teen, would ask Piestewa, the quiet mother of two, for tips on how to hit the curve. The military pushed them into adulthood, offered security and a future. Sports provided a common link of resource, and of strength.
I wonder how often Piestewa thought of her favorite quote, uttered long ago by Wilma Rudolph, the U.S. track star and Olympic gold medalist, back in the days when women were thought to faint at the sight of blood and were forbidden from running marathons:
‘‘I ran and ran every day, and I acquired a sense of determination, this sense of spirit that I would never, never, give up, no matter what else happened.’’
Ever since Margaret Corbin hiked up her petticoats and replaced her fallen husband behind a cannon in the Revolution, American women have fought for their country. More than 200,000 women now serve in the U.S. armed forces, making up 15 percent of the enlisted ranks and the officer corps. Officials estimate 80 percent of them participated in high school sports. They fly combat missions, serve on fighter ships, follow their male counterparts into hostile territory.
Some of them, probably many of them, discovered hints of their true selves on dusty fields, just like Privates Lynch and Piestewa.
‘‘God, what a kid,’’ Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight said about Lynch. ‘‘If we had five of her, I don’t think we would lose to anybody.’’
She never could hit a curve. Watson, Lynch’s former coach, is pretty sure he’ll see Jessie one day soon, bat in hand, experimenting with the techniques an old friend once taught her.