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Fall/Winter 2023 Tarleton State University Magazine
Everybody 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. – Kendall Daniel
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, and hitting leadoff and batting .339 with a .487 on-base percentage.
No question, she had her low moments.
“As time went on longer and longer, near my second surgery last October, I didn’t see much progress in my legs, not as much as the doctors had hoped. I walked with a limp for a long time, had a lot of pain in my leg.
“After the second surgery, though, I realized things were moving in the right direction. All the doubts kind of left my head.”
No one wants Kendall to succeed more than Tarleton softball coach Mark Cumpian.
“She was a really good pitcher coming out of high school,” he said. “At this level you have to have top-notch pitching, and she was really good. She fit what we needed.
“She had her accident just as we were about to sign her. I think a lot of coaches would have wanted the roster spot and not honored their commitment with so much uncertainty. It was important to me to show her that we were her softball and Tarleton family. It was important to me because I felt like she needed that.”
Kendall enjoyed a stellar high school career, leading the Panthers to Class 4A state championships in 2021 and ’22. She hit .562 and earned all-district honors after being named 20-5A Offensive Player of the Year as a freshman.
That kind of athletic résumé gives a player choices when it comes to college. A major factor in Kendall’s decision was Tarleton’s animal science program.
“I got stuck in an animal science class in high school and ended up loving it,” she said. “I decided that was definitely the path I wanted to take. Once I found out about the program at Tarleton, it was a no-brainer.”
Back on the field, she hopes this year to finally showcase her competitive fire.
“She really wants to play,” Cumpian said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a person with this much drive. She’s a great kid, she has good grades, and we’d love to have a lot more like her.”
That drive gives Kendall an attitude that served her well in the tough times.
I absolutely love the game. I didn’t want the injuries to take it away from me. — Kendall Daniel
“I also want to hopefully help someone in a similar place in the future. Being able to know I can do it would help someone else to push through and not give up on their dreams. Even if I could pass it on to just one person, that would be great for me.”
And initiate in that person fresh successes where once there was doubt and pain.
Everybody loves a comeback story.
