PAIN G AIN and

STORY BY JOHN LANGHAM

Taylor Lynch’s phone started ringing. She picked up, saw Madi Sue Montgomery’s name on the caller ID and quickly answered.

“I’m telling you before I tell anyone else,” Montgomery said to her friend.

“What’s wrong?”

Montgomery proceeded to tell Lynch how she had torn her ACL just days before her sophomore year of softball at Oklahoma State was set to begin.

The Burleson, Texas, native had traveled home to Centennial High School on Aug. 2, 2016, to take part in an alumni volleyball game at the school. Her father, Monty, had told her to be smart if she was going to play in the game.

Montgomery took part in warm ups, going through hitting lines with fellow alumna. She jumped up to spike a ball and all went as planned — until she landed.

“It felt like I landed on a pencil,” Montgomery recalled from the night she was hurt. “It wasn’t anything bad, my knee just kind of rolled a bit. Originally I thought it was just going to be sore for a little bit.”

When Montgomery returned to Stillwater the next day, she met with the softball team’s athletic trainer, Claire Williams, and had the bad news dropped on her.

Torn ACL.

She then made the call to Lynch. It was the same call the two had shared five years prior when they were freshmen in high school — with the roles reversed.

“It was weird that both of us have had to have that phone call,” Lynch said. “But it was nice because I knew exactly what she was going through.”

When Lynch tore her ACL as a freshman at Red Oak High School, her first call was to Montgomery. The phone call five years later was just the latest in a series of shared memories for the friends that have known each other since they were six-years-old.

The teammates have been in the same dugout for more than a decade now.

LIKE BROTHER, LIKE SISTER

Richard Lynch and Braden Montgomery always knew their sisters loved to watch them play baseball. They knew that Taylor and Madi Sue would always be there to cheer them on, no matter if they struck out or hit a grand slam.

But what they didn’t know was that they would be the reasons that both younger siblings first picked up a bat and glove.

“I always wanted to be like him,” Taylor Lynch said of her brother. “I wanted to play baseball, and when I figured out that I couldn’t, I started playing softball and everything just took off from there.”

Taylor's desire to be just like her older brother helped carry her to places she never thought she’d reach.

“She was always hanging out with me and my buddies,” Richard Lynch said. “She was always trying to be one of the guys and would mess around with us out on the field because she just wanted to be part of the group. It has been crazy to see how she’s developed over the years from being such a little runt and then turning herself into a D-I athlete.”

The bond between siblings was unbreakable growing up, even through long afternoons when Richard would pepper balls back at his sister for hours, with the occasional one skidding past Taylor’s glove and colliding with various body parts.

Richard would remind Taylor that she didn’t need to worry about the pain. He was hard on his sister, constantly striving to see her become the best that she could be, and he also knew that no matter how much she hated him for it at the time, his efforts would prepare Taylor for whatever came her way.

“He has always expected the best from me, and I never wanted to let him down,” Taylor said. “That was always my motivation.”

The profound impact that brothers had on the Cowgirls helped shape the two into the prominent people they are today, but it was a two-way street.

“I knew that whatever I did had an impact on the way she perceived life,” Richard said. “If I did something detrimental, I had to think about how that would affect her. I had to think about what she would say to me.

“She honestly made me a better person.”

As Lynch and Montgomery sat on the brown leather couch that lines a wall inside the Oklahoma State softball clubhouse, they reminisced on the memories they shared growing up as teammates and friends.

Trips across the country for travel ball tournaments, long car rides and plenty of nights spent at hotels in states far, far away from their native Texas filled their thoughts. The talented tandem remembered talking to friends back home and asking what they did on the Fourth of July.

They wanted to know what other kids did during the summer because they already knew what they would be doing — playing softball.

Montgomery and Lynch first joined forces at age 10 when they began competing with the Texas Glory, a travel-ball organization based in north Texas. But prior to that, the two came across each other as opponents quite frequently in the four years that preceded their partnership.

“We played against Taylor a lot. We could never get her out,” said Monty Montgomery, Madi Sue’s father and longtime coach. “She was a slapper and speedster that was constantly wearing us out. Eventually, I decided that if we couldn’t get her out maybe we could convince her to come play with us instead.”

“She pitched and had a really good curveball. I knew she was the best kid and had the best arm on her team,” Lynch recalled about the times she faced Madi Sue growing up. “I was always like ‘I need to get a base hit or something’ because I knew how good she was and there weren’t many kids as good as her at that age.

“We both knew that we were the toughest outs on our teams, and we had that sort of competitive nature built up between us.”

The first time the two faced off came when they were just six-years-old, and over the years that followed, the competitive fire that existed between the two softball stars was stoked quite often.

Their relationship blossomed even further after they became teammates.

After sharing a dugout, Lynch and Montgomery trusted each other like sisters, but the competitiveness remained. It’s something they credit for the success that they have had, even now after being named All-Big 12 performers in one of college softball’s premier conferences.

“I think our competitiveness with each other has definitely helped us along the way,” Lynch said. “Maybe we weren’t necessarily competing for the same spot, but we’ve always driven each other to constantly be better or to take the next step.”

That competitive fire saw both become stars within the Texas Glory organization and achieve success in all corners of the country as teammates. It has also been something that Monty Montgomery has been happy to see exist between the two because he knows how it will help them later in their lives.

“You need that competitive drive throughout your whole life,” he said. “They’re playing softball now, but as they grow up and get into a competitive workplace it’s one of those life lessons that’s good for any time. You don’t have to win at everything, but you have to be able to be your best at everything. It’s hard to do that daily, but they’ve practiced and worked hard and shown that they have that mindset.”