It was a softball foundation built on sand. But it became the rare example that such a normally unsettled base could remain solid enough to weather any storm.
On a stroll across the white sand of Florida’s Fort Walton Beach, Don Howard noticed something that seemed out of place among the sunbathers, kite flyers and people tossing Frisbees around. What the 8-year old girl firing underhand pitches to her father lacked in form, she made up for with enthusiasm for softball.
Howard returned to his family and informed his daughter, Baylor School softball coach Kelli Smith, that there was a young girl pitching at the other end of the beach. So Smith and her dad walked over and introduced themselves, and that chance meeting with young Macy Ann McKnight and her parents opened the door for one of the most impressive prep softball careers in Chattanooga history.
“We had no idea who they were,” Smith said. “We’re just a softball family and thought it was neat to see this little girl out there pitching. Once we started talking, we found out that they were from north Georgia and knew some of the same people in the softball community that we did.
“That was just odd. This was a kid who could’ve been from anywhere in the country, and she was from the same area as us. We’ve joked about recruiting her because she was 8 and couldn’t throw it in the ocean back then. We talked about softball for a long time that day, and the next summer Macy Ann wound up coming to one of our summer camps for kids.”