El Camino pitcher endures through aneurysm, COVID to pitch in school’s first on-campus game
By Terry Bernal Daily Journal Staff
Apr 15, 2021
Taylor Hardley seemed like an ordinary kid when she took to the softball pitching circle Tuesday at El Camino.
A senior pitcher for the Lady Colts, Hardley made history by throwing the first official pitch as El Camino debuted its new, on-campus softball diamond. For an ordinary kid, such a place in history might be simple happenstance, being in the right place at the right time. But most everyone who knows Hardley’s story knows — she’s quite extraordinary.
And Tuesday, just beneath the surface of that seemingly ordinary kid, Hardley was the belle of the ball.
“It feels so surreal,” Hardley said. “Like — I’m here and I get to throw on this field that we’ve worked for.”
As a four-year varsity player, Hardley’s softball career has perfectly fit into the grand scheme of things — the approval, construction, and opening of El Camino’s first on-campus softball diamond — but because of a life-threatening injury during her sophomore year, even this new diamond seems like a mere footnote.
On March 19, 2019, Hardley, who was 16 at the time, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by an arteriovenous malformation, a congenital tangle of blood vessels in the brain. She was dropped off at school that day, a seemingly ordinary Tuesday, by her father David. Later that morning, however, she was experiencing headaches that grew so severe, she reported to the health office. Soon thereafter, an ambulance was called, and she was rushed to the emergency room.
Her stay in the hospital would last three months.
“It’s better now,” Hardley said. “But it was hard for me to recognize people around me, like family and friends.”
Hardley was fortunate in that her overall motor functions were unaffected.
“I was able to walk,” Hardley said. “I was actually concerned to see if I’d be able to walk and get up and do things. But physically I was completely fine.”
Not that she was immediately back on her feet. She spent the first week of her hospitalization at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Medical Center being regularly sedated. Once she began moving around, though, one of the first things Hardley insisted on testing was if she’d be able to play softball again.
“It took a while,” Hardley said. “By the time I got to rehab in May (2019), they were trying to get me to throw things a little bit, catch, just get those functions back a little bit.”
If all Hardley was known for through her years at El Camino was her recovery, celebrated by her return to the field in 2020 and her start in Tuesday’s historic opener, it would be the stuff of fairy tales. But there is a deeper connection Hardley shares with El Camino’s diamond, as she was one of five players — along with Keilana Andaya, Mia Ledesma, Divina Moreno and Jamie Smith — to speak before the South San Francisco School Board as a freshman to advocate for the financing of on-campus softball facilities.
Once upon a time, the Lady Colts traveled a few blocks down Miller Avenue to neighboring Sunshine Gardens Elementary School to play their home games. By the time Hardley arrived on campus in 2017-18, the team was trekking across town to Terrabay Field.
“We were just stating that we wanted a field on campus, one that’s just safer,” Hardley said. “We have one right here, we don’t have to leave class so much earlier to get to our home field. It wasn’t totally safe (at Terrabay). There were just holes everywhere. It wasn’t ideal.”
The group of five players, now all seniors, certainly had a good role model in co-athletic director Eric Jacobson. A graduate of El Camino in 1988, Jacobson has been plagued by medical turmoil for years. A former three-sport athlete whose name hangs on the coveted Blanket Award as El Camino’s boys’ athlete of the year in 1988, Jacobson suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a painful hereditary nerve disorder which led to the amputation of his right leg below the knee in 2010.
Jacobson — “Coach Jake,” as he’s known to his players; yes, he still serves as an assistant coach with the El Camino football team — has been at the forefront of lobbying for funds to overhaul the once dilapidated athletics facilities of South San Francisco Unified School District’s two high school campuses. He was the catalyst in the refurbishment of the football fields at El Camino and South San Francisco High School, the resurfacing of the tennis courts at El Camino, and, most recently, the installation of three new diamonds opening this year, including on-campus baseball and softball fields at South San Francisco.
Jacobson even wears a tattoo on the ring finger of his left hand that reads “E C” with a heart between the letters. These initials are, in fact, happenstance, as the initials belong to he and wife, Chrissy. But the happenstance is fitting as his dedication to the improvements to the facilities of his alma mater is akin to a wonderfully successful marriage.
Now, Jacobson motors around El Camino’s campus on a Rascal scooter. And when he arrived during Tuesday’s home softball opener, he sat atop a perch overlooking the new diamond from behind home plate — looking upon a stretch of land that used to house five portable classrooms and a seldom used block of outdoor basketball courts — and even the cloth mask he was wearing couldn’t conceal the joy on his face.
“It’s like Christmas,” Jacobson said.
The debut of El Camino’s “Christmas” miracle was nearly spoiled by the coronavirus pandemic, though. The diamond was initially scheduled to be constructed for the 2020 season, but delays pushed the grand opening back to 2021. Construction was actually completed after the pandemic closures.
Hardley was a junior when the closures began in March 2020, nearly a year after she suffered her aneurysm. She actually pitched in the three games El Camino played last year. But the feeling brought on by the closures was eerily familiar to her hospitalization and recovery.
“It just felt like I was stuck in the same situation,” Hardley said, “just being at home isolated.”
But remember, Hardley is quite extraordinary. And the fan of all things Disney was bound and determined to realize her fairy tale ending. This, she realized, in taking the field in Tuesday’s historic game.
“When something happens like that, the trauma to the brain, I was like: ‘If she could come back her senior year, that would be so incredible,’” El Camino head coach Manny Cotla said. “But when she [recovered] like she did, even her parents said something clicked in her. She has so much drive. I’m going to miss her a lot.”
https://www.smdailyjournal.com/sports/local/a-fairy-tale-comeback-for-el-camino-softball-player-taylor-hardley/article_7acda230-9d96-11eb-a9ac-77a25187c8c3.html
Source: San Mateo Daily Journal