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Editor’s note: on Saturday June 3rd, North Carolina State announced the hiring of its new softball head coach and—in an article on our site titled The Player Who Forever Inspired New Wolfpack Head Coach Jennifer Patrick-Swift—we read about Mikayla Focht, a talented young player who signed with Coach Patrick-Swift’s St. Francis program.
Mikayla, however, never got to play for the Red Flash as she died in an ATV accident in April of 2017 just months before she would have been a college freshman.
In this article, you’ll learn of a showcase event created to honor the player who impacted so many on and off the field…
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The fall season in the softball world is full of showcase events with the primary focus of providing exposure and attention to wanna-be college players.
This October, a new showcase to take place in Western Pennsylvania will have a poignancy and purpose that few others have, for it will honor a promising softball player whose life was cut short at the age of 18 in a terrible, freak accident a year and a half ago.
On October 13-14, 2018 the Mikayla Focht Memorial will honor the event’s namesake who, according to Warren Wolff, her former club coach with the Ohio Outlaws, was “a young lady who had an amazing love and passion for life and it showed when she played the game she loved.”
Mikayla, also known as “Mick,” had fulfilled a life-long dream of getting a scholarship to play college softball and signed a letter of intent in the fall of 2016 with St. Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania.
“I would love to someday be in Oklahoma City playing in the College World Series,” she wrote several years ago. “I eat, drink and sleep softball. I never have an offseason. I train 12 months a year and I give 110 percent to the greatest game of all time: “SOFTBALL.”
A senior at Hollidaysburg Area High School in Pennsylvania, Mikayla was riding as a passenger behind the driver on an ATV in the early hours of April 14, 2017 when it collided with a deer, knocking both riders off while traveling at a high rate of speed.
Mikayla was pronounced dead at the scene when responders arrived at the location in Blair County, Pennsylvania and the Keystone State was left stunned at the sudden loss of a bright light who had a promising future on and off the playing fields.
A three-time District 6 All-Star and 1st Team Central Penn League honoree (2014, ’15 and ’16), Mikayla committed to St. Francis program when she was 13 years old.
The outgoing student-athlete, who had a 4.0 GPA and graduated with honors, had a .467 career batting average and a .551 on-base percentage. In 2022, she will be inducted into the District 6 Hall of Fame.
The idea for the Mikayla Focht Memorial event came after Wolff learned that the athlete’s parents, Jamie and Dawn, had started a scholarship fund in their daughter’s name for District 6 players and organized a benefit tournament to support it.
“Since her number was always #4,” explains her father, “we give four $1,000 scholarships. Warren asked if he could do a memorial tournament as well to keep her memory alive and we thought it was an awesome idea.”
The Memorial showcase will donate its proceeds to the Mikayla “Mick” Focht Memorial Scholarship Fund and says Wolff, “We are also going to be giving away two or three $1,000 scholarships in her name to girls in this event. We will have other ways to help this amazing cause as rubber bracelets that say ‘Mikayla Focht’ on one side and ‘FlyHigh#4’ on the other sell for two dollars each.”
Along with her passion for softball, her mother, Dawn, says a few of Mikayla’s “other favorite things were hunting, fishing and her dog, Dakota. Mikayla passed away in April and Dakota passed away in June.”
Coaches and all those that knew the teenager pointed out that she had an uncommon work ethic to be the best at whatever she did.
Adds her father, Jamie: “Mikayla loved the game and understood what it took to be the best. She would wake up at 5 am and get a couple hundred swings in before school because she wanted to make sure she was ready for practice after school. I have never seen another player with her work ethic.”
But her softball successes aren’t the primary reason an event is being held in her honor this fall—her impact off the field was what seemed to have touched everyone who crossed paths with the outgoing athlete.
“As a person Mikayla was beautiful inside and out,” continues her parents. “She was very outgoing and loved everyone. Her laugh was contagious and she always had a smile on her face. Mikayla was loved by anyone who came into contact with her and she would find a way to bring the best out of anyone.” “Someday, we will be reunited again and we can only imagine just how glorious it will be!”
Jamie Focht finished by explaining what everyone involved with the fall showcase hopes to accomplish.
“Mikayla was an amazing young lady who was taken way too soon, but she will live in our hearts forever. What we hope to accomplish through handing out the scholarships and holding the tournaments is to be able to keep her legacy alive and to help athletes realize that their hard work and dedication does pay off.”
New North Carolina State head coach Jennifer Patrick-Swift was at St. Francis for seven years and expressed how much Mikayla, her first early verbal for the Red Flash, meant to the record-setting coach personally and professionally.
The coach said Mikayla’s legacy will continue to live on, even though she never played there, and Patrick-Swift will also tell her players, including her new team at North Carolina State, about the student-athlete who made such an impact on her.
“Mikayla was truly a coach’s once-in-a-lifetime recruits,” she said in the earlier article. “While she never got to wear a Red Flash jersey on the field, we provided one to have with her until the end of time. The other we gave to her parents to have because I made the decision that there was and will only ever be one #4 on our team.”
“Mikayla took the #4 with her and because in my mind, there will never be another player that could live up to the person and player she was, the #4 will no longer be an option for future players, as in the minds of the players and our program there was only one #4.”
“Her jersey has hung in our dugout in every game since the time of her passing and it will continue to be there for the next three years that she should have been wearing it on the field. Her name and number were on our lineup cards this year and will continue to be for the next three years.”
“Her helmet dawning the #4 remains in her cubby at the field and her bat with the #4 sticker stands tall in the bat rack.”
“She may be gone but she will never be forgotten.”
“I’m still very close with the administration at St. Francis and it’s my hope to be able to retire her #4 there so no one ever wears it, as no one is wearing it there now.”
“And when I get to Raleigh, I will tell the team about the person and player she was… I want them to always remember that this is something bigger than us, this is something that is bigger than the team and even the sport.”
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To get more information about the Mikayla Focht Memorial Showcase, including instructions on how to sign up a team, contact Warren Wolff of the Ohio Outlaws at [email protected] or go to the Memorial Event page to fill out an entry application.