Petal’s Natalie Herrington ended her career the way any senior could hope for, and the numbers she put up certainly explain why that was possible.
This season the pitcher held a 0.72 earned run average, struck out 246 batters and walked just 36. In the batter’s box she also batted .461 and drove in 19 runs while belting nine doubles, a triple and a home run.
Her effort garnered her numerous Player of the Year awards and All-State accolades, and more importantly, was critical to leading Petal to the softball program’s first-ever state championship and is why she is named the 2022 Pine Belt Sports Softball Player of the Year.
Click on Title To Read Document
However, all of her achievements this past season almost never happened.
Two weeks before the season began, Herrington was in a car wreck that resulted in her car flipping three times.
“This truck pulls out right in front of me,” Herrington said. “He had a stop sign, and pulls out right in front of me. I tried my best to slow down and can’t, so I swerve. I hit the side of him and then my little car flips over the left side of the road and into the ditch.”
Her car flipped over twice, but as it was about to flip for a third time, it hit a tree trunk and stopped the momentum, which resulted in the car flipping back right side up. Had the tree trunk not been there, her car would have landed completely upside down and the accident could have resulted in injuries.
Herrington’s car was totaled but she walked away, uninjured and unscathed.
“I sat there for a second and I’m not injured,” Herrington said. “I realized none of my doors will open. My back glass window was completely shattered. I crawl out the back and I’m in my softball uniform and there’s a few rips in it. I had a scrape on my chin and called my parents. I was freaking out but all I had was a scratch on my chin.”
Meanwhile at practice, her team quickly noticed Herrington’s late arrival as she is never late to practice. Phone calls were placed to her parents, but eventually one of her teammates checked her location on her phone and noticed she was at a complete stop. Moments later Herrington called Petal softball coach Wendy Hogue to let her know what happened.
“She calls and says ‘hey I was in wreck; I’m okay. I’m going to be late for practice,’” Hogue said. “She didn’t miss a beat. It was almost like she was superhuman this year. Nothing was going to keep her from her very best.
Despite the accident, Herrington practiced the next day. She didn’t even have any soreness that is expected after a car accident.
“At the moment I was most concerned about my car,” Herrington said. “I’ve thought of all of the different things that could have been life threatening. If it wouldn’t have happened or would have. I was blessed even with how calm I stayed during it. It was almost like God’s hands over me to be able to just walk away from something like that.”
As scary as the moment was and even scarier on how life-altering the wreck could have been, Herrington says the ordeal gave her an entire new mindset and perspective heading into the season. Prior to the season, Herrington was feeling the pressure and expectations of having a team that had the potential to win a state championship, but her change in mindset after the wreck she credits to her success.
“It was eye-opening,” Herrington said. “It was a bring back to reality kind of thing. I think it put into place a good mindset for me. It was almost like a refresh with my mindset. I think that helped me going into the season. It’s hard to explain but it was almost like I was a new person coming out of that. It opened my eyes that softball isn’t everything even though I put so much of my time and energy into it. It doesn’t define who I am, and that I have so much else to live for.”
Even Hogue noticed how different Herrington carried herself.
“I think the wreck helped her prioritize things,” Hogue said. “It took the pressure of the game of softball off her. After the wreck she could have been nervous and not wanting to work out. But the very next day she was wanting to do what she could. She had this renewed vision.
“The only thing was us keeping that mindset, especially Natalie. She was a leader on the team. Once she realized that she can and will then with the rest of it we just needed to score a run here and there. The games she had to keep runs off the board, she did. The game she had to strike out 15, she did. If we needed to play defense she let us play defense.”
It eventually helped down the stretch in both the South State Championship and State championship games, as Petal lost the first game in each series.
In South State against Northwest Rankin, Herrington and her team had to go on the road and defeat a strong Lady Cougar team to keep their season alive. The right-handed pitcher pitched a shutout in a 1-0 win to keep the season alive.
Again one week later, after dropping the first game to Hernando in the state championship, Herrington arguably turned in her best all-around two-game span in the playoffs. Between the second and third game, Herrington struck out a combined 16 batters, walked two and allowed two earned runs while inside the batter’s box she put up five hits.
While Herrington will look forward to the next step of her softball career at Pearl River CC this fall, when looking back on the season she credits her coaches and teammates for all of her success.
“It was perfect,” Herrington said. “I even loved the losses. We knew a team wasn’t twice as good as us. Being able to answer (in the playoffs) like that just shows how close our team and coaching staff was and how we fight. Our mindset was so different this year. It helped us win, but we just had so much fun. It was a perfect storybook ending.”
