For LOVE of Tarleton Softball Player Returns After Life-threatening Injuries
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verybody loves a comeback story, and Kendall Daniel is at the center of a good one. Kendall, a two-way standout on the Tarleton State University softball team, took the field recently for the Texans’ fall practices after redshirting the 2023 spring season. Her missed season followed a horrific car crash toward the end of her high school senior year. She had posted about her commitment to Tarleton State that morning, then helped her Liberty High School (Kingwood) team win a big game the afternoon of April 11, 2022. She celebrated with her parents and grandparents in the parking lot and hugged them all goodbye, staying behind to support the baseball team.
After dropping off a friend after the baseball game, Kendall was headed home on a farm-to-market road when a pickup with no headlights towing a van veered into her lane. The van hit her head on, totaling her car and causing it to flip. Reports say the driver fled the scene, leaving Kendall alone in the wreckage with potentially fatal injuries for more than an hour before emergency medical personnel freed her. Her parents stood at the accident site watching as Life Flight transported her to the trauma center. Kendall endured three reconstructive surgeries, two on
her compound-fractured right femur and the other on her shattered left wrist. Her dreams of playing softball again, as well as her life, hung in the balance. “Once softball was taken away from me, all I could think about was going back to it,” Kendall said. “I told my parents, ‘I don’t care how much extra work this takes, we’re going to figure it out and get back on the field where I belong.’ ” The comeback began this summer when she took the field for the Nashville Fame in the Music City Collegiate League. Her body was tested as she played in all 30 games of the season. She responded by being named Breakthrough Player of the Year, pitching 46 innings with 45 strikeouts,
“Once softball was taken away from me, all I could think about was going back to it. I told my parents, ‘I don’t care how much extra work this takes, we’re going to figure it out and get back on the field where I belong.’ ” — Kendall Daniel
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TARLETON STATE UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE
FALL/WINTER 2023
