College softball: OC's Crain overcomes brush with death

On November 19, Caitlyn Crain was headed to Waco to visit a friend before heading home to Saginaw for Thanksgiving break.

Around 8:30 p.m., as she drove down Highway 6 just south of Eastland, she hit a deer and spun out of control. Her car went into a sideways spin and was hit twice by an Eastland school bus filled with students returning from a basketball game.

Or so she’s been told.

“I don’t remember any of it actually,” the freshman softball pitcher at Odessa College said. “All I know is what my parents and what the doctors and what the EMT people told me.”

Crain was sent by helicopter to a hospital in Abilene, where she was treated for numerous injuries, including a punctured lung, a torn spleen and a torn ligament in her left elbow.

Her dad, David Crain said he expected to get a call that night, but one from his daughter, not a police officer.

“We expected her to be at Baylor around 11 or 11:30,” David Crain said. “I went to sleep waiting on her call and turned out somebody did call. It was somebody that had her phone and called my wife and said, ‘We have your phone. She left it in the ambulance.’ A police officer in Ranger found her phone said she was in Abilene so we took off to Abilene.”

Caitlyn was restricted to just walking around for six weeks after the accident, she said, because the doctors wanted to minimize any potential of making the injury to her spleen worse.

“That wasn’t that big of a deal, because we were gone for Christmas break,” she said. “We were supposed to be working out but I don’t really know any people who do that.”

The doctors put a tube in her chest cavity to drain all the fluid to prevent her from getting pneumonia. She also had surgery to repair the torn ligament in her elbow.

David Crain said when the accident happened, he didn’t think about what it would mean for his daughter’s softball career.

“We was just thankful she’s alive,” he said, choking up. “Anything else was gravy.”

Three months to the day after the accident, Crain pitched in her first game for the Lady Wranglers. She threw five innings of relief work, striking out eight against Ontero (Colo.) in the Midland Classic. Caitlyn Crain said she was nervous in her first outing.

“I hadn’t pitched or anything in three months,” Caitlyn Crain said. “I didn’t want to go out and start playing and not do very good and the team looks bad because I haven’t been playing so long. After I pitched my first pitch, it was a strike and I had a huge smile. I turned my back to the batter so she wouldn’t know. It was pretty exciting.”

Now, as the Lady Wranglers prepare to play Ranger in a doubleheader starting at 1 p.m. today at the Odessa College softball field, Caityln Crain is the No. 1 pitcher for the team after Katelyn Stanley sprained her fingers in her pitching hand falling down a flight of stairs.

“She’s going to be good,” Odessa College softball coach Joel Prickett said. “All three of them are pretty good. Lauren Kolanko is getting better and Caitlyn is one of the best pitchers in the country in junior college. She’ll have her ups and downs coming back after three months. I think she’s pitched about seven times total since her wreck.

“I think the thing is she’ll be around 100 percent at the end of the season, which is where we want her to be. I think it could be a blessing in disguise as far as freshness and number of innings on her arm.”

David Crain, who makes many games, said she hasn’t lost anything on her pitches.

“She’s still got same speed, probably 65 mph, great rise, great drop,” he said. “When she’s pitching, the defense just works better. I don’t know what it is.”

THE BASICS

>> What: Odessa College softball doubleheader.

>> Who: Odessa College (6-9) vs. Ranger College (2-5).

>> When: 1 p.m. Wednesday.

>> Where: Wrangler Field.