- April 26, 2024
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Leah Stevens shouts in delight after closing the door on Beachside on March 7 at the Pirates' field. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens has a 5-0 record and a minuscule 0.44 earned run average. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens has a new appreciation for softball and life. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens has allowed just four hits and has 73 strikeouts in 32 innings pitched. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens struck out 15 in 6 1/3 innings against Beachside. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens gives pinch runner Elaina Padilla a high-five after reaching first base. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens gives catcher Alondra Vincenty a high-five after the win against Beachside. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens releases a pitch to a Beachside batter. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens throws with amazing velocity and spin that moves violently, coach Sabrina Manhart said. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens winds up. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens pitches in the second inning with a 1-0 lead against Beachside on March 7. Photo by Brent Woronoff
Leah Stevens loved softball. But until the sport was taken away from her, she did not realize what she loved most about it.
It wasn’t striking out batters, winning games or getting better as a pitcher. It was those little everyday things she shared with her teammates — the inside jokes, the handshakes, the camaraderie.
“Just having fun with each other, the human interactions of softball. I really missed that,” she said.
And now that she’s been cleared to play again, she’s enjoying every moment.
“I think I have a different appreciation for the game now,” she said.
Fourteen months ago, Stevens, then a sophomore at Matanzas High School, was diagnosed with cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, a type of stroke that occurs when a blood clot forms in the brain’s venous sinuses, preventing blood from draining out of the brain.
Her blood clot was large, large enough to fill the back of her head and into her neck.
CVST is a rare form of stroke that affects about 5 people in 1 million each year, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Stevens was on blood thinners and blood-clot-dissolving medications for over a year until the clot slowly dissolved to a point where she was no longer at risk.
Coming off a phenomenal freshman season with the Pirates in which she struck out 129 batters in 61 innings, Stevens was told that there was a high probability she could be on blood thinners for the rest of her life. If that were to happen, she would never be able to play softball again.
Last season, she couldn’t be on the field during practice for fear of getting hit in the head. Her headaches never went away, she said. They still haven't, but now she manages them. When she was cleared to resume pitching, she pitched to her mother, Anne Stevens, a former college softball and basketball player at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. Leah wasn’t allowed to pitch to live batters or even join her teammates on the field.
Finally, on Feb. 26, when the blood thinners were out of her system, Stevens, now a junior, was cleared to join her teammates and pitch again. She had one practice. The next day, she threw a one-hit shutout against New Smyrna Beach, striking out 14 batters in six innings.
She’s been that good since. She’s pitched in five games and has thrown two complete game no-hitters against DeLand on March 6 and Taylor on March 12. She also did not allow a hit in 5 1/3 innings against Providence School.
Stevens has a 5-0 record in leading the Pirates to a 7-0 start. She has a 0.44 earned average and has allowed just four hits in 32 innings pitched while striking out 73 batters. She has been amazingly consistent with 14 strikeouts in two games and 15 in three games. And she’s not even in shape yet.
“Although she was allowed to do spin work and pitch some, she wasn’t allowed to condition like she has in the past,” Matanzas softball coach Sabrina Manhart said. “She would get headaches jogging, so we put a stationary bike in the dugout so she can still warm her body up effectively without the bouncing motion.”
In her freshman season she would warm up by running and stretching and then throwing in the bullpen for 30 to 40 minutes, Manhart said.
Stevens said now if she gets overheated, she gets headaches because her blood flow is not completely back yet. She uses cooling towels to regulate her temperature.
“We’re just being smart about how she gets fit,” Manhart said. “If she takes 45 minutes to warm up, she doesn’t feel good. We’re trying to do more with less. I think she’s a better pitcher now. We’re putting her on pitch counts and just trying to be smart and have her recognize we’re going to work with her in this process. What she does this season is not as important as her future in this sport. This is just the first steps in getting back to full strength.”
As her performances have shown so far, her velocity and movement have not suffered. And Manhart said her control has improved.
“She’s a difficult pitcher to catch because she has such sharp movement. I caught her a couple of weeks ago. It’s not easy to do, and I was a college catcher,” Manhart said. “She doesn’t throw a whole lot of different pitches. What she does throw she throws with amazing velocity and spin that just moves violently. She has become a much more efficient pitcher. She hits her spots better and is not going as deep into pitch counts.”
Stevens said she was overwhelmed by the reaction of her teammates when she returned. Only one player was on the team when she last played with the Pirates — fellow junior Ashley Sampselle. But the other players witnessed what she was going through this past year.
The team was so supportive of me. They were all so happy for me that I was back, not for my stats, not for me to help the team, but for me to be able to play the game I love.”
— LEAH STEVENS
At the beginning of the season she had a talk with her teammates about having fun and living in the moment.
“I know we can get all caught up in the stats and the numbers, but I really wanted everybody to know that when I'm back on the field I want everyone to have fun, and that's the big thing. That's my main goal out there,” she said.
Stevens calls the last 14 months of her life, her “journey.” It’s not a journey she’s had to travel alone. From the start, she’s had support from her family, coaches, teammates and friends. Stevens is a dual-enrolled student in the AICE program, so academics have always been the most important part of her life, she said. She plans to major in engineering in college. But she had difficulty concentrating when she was on her medications.
She said she focused on keeping her GPA up, her teachers worked with her to solve any issues and her coaches, Manhart and Ashley Forrest, advocated on her behalf.
It’s been a very long year for her. It took a lot out of her to keep up with her classes, and it was physically draining to do a lot of things.”
— CHRIS STEVENS, Leah's father
“It’s been a very long year for her,” her father, Chris Stevens, said. “It took a lot out of her to keep up with her classes, and it was physically draining to do a lot of things. The side effects from the medications she was on, and being on a blood thinner everyday, she had to be very cautious. Plus dealing with the blood clot itself dissolving away, it just takes a while, and she had a constant headache. Constant.”
Her journey began on Jan. 14, 2023. Leah was in Georgia for a softball camp when she woke up with a terrible migraine headache.
“We went to get some medication for it when she finished the camp,” her father said.
Back in Palm Coast four days later, she was still having migraines.
“Luckily, I had my annual physical and my doctor said, ‘You should probably go to the ER, because this is getting borderline, not normal,’” Leah said.
Tests revealed her blood clot, and she was lifeflighted to AdventHealth Orlando. She spent a week in pediatric intensive care. That was the worst week of her journey, she said.
“It was a time of a lot of uncertainty,” Leah said. “And that was hard to deal with, waiting for those answers that were really hard to hear. The first few months of my journey they told me there's a high chance I’m not going to play.”
There were many ups and downs, she said, days she felt great and other days she felt terrible.
“There were some low points, I’m not going to lie,” she said. “I feel like as much as my injury was physical, it was also very mental. I think I have a different appreciation for the game. Before, I kind of had a checklist. Like, let's try to get this many batters out or whatever. But I feel like now I go into each game with the mindset of, OK this could be your last game, you never know.”
For a while she was worried that college coaches wouldn’t recruit her because of what she has been through. But Manhart expects her to have a big recruiting summer because she has demonstrated that she is as good a teammate as she is a competitor.
“She’s going to show who she really is,” Manhart said. “She’s got what it takes to be a very high level player and an amazing teammate.”
