Last week, Maddie Terrell–a standout catcher on the Fury Platinum – Brown travel ball team–was announced as a Top 100 honoree in the 2023 Extra Elite 100.
She’s a prolific power hitter and every round-tripper at the high school level for the standout is bittersweet for a poignant reason: she gets to hear the voice of her late father.
Here’s this touching story courtesy of Matt St. Jean of WTVA-ABC TV in Mississippi…
*****
If you find yourself at a baseball or softball game you may hear a fan shout out the term: “Dinger” describing a home run.
In Vardaman, Mississippi, there’s a 2020 Extra Elite 100 softball player, Maddie Terrell, who’s hit a lot of home runs and to her, it’s more than just a trip around the bases and touching home… each “dinger”reminds her of her father.
If you’ve been to a Vardaman softball game over the past few years, sophomore catcher Maddie’s father, Jason, was hard to miss.
“Most people know me because of the home run videos he posts on Facebook and him saying, ‘dinger, dinger’ stuff like that,” Terrell said.
Jason was always there for Maddie, through heat, through cold…through cancer. Jason was diagnosed with Leiomyosarcoma in 2017.
“It was hard watching him go through chemo,” Terrell said. “He was so sick but he still got to come out and support me, and he was still the loudest person in the crowd until he wasn’t here anymore.”
In early June of 2020, Jason lost his battle with cancer.
“Me and her had about three years to kind of mentally try to prepare ourselves for this,” Maddie’s mother, Tara, said. “But nothing prepares you for the death of your husband and her father.”
The 2021 season could have been a quiet one without Jason in the stands, but P.A. announcer, Jordan Inman, had a surprise in store for Maddie and Tara on her first home run of 2021…a recording of Jason shouting “dinger, dinger.”
“I’m not going to lie I got so teary-eyed,” Maddie said. “But it was great, it left me a feeling that my dad was here.”
Even though he’s not in the front row anymore, his legacy as a father and a fan lives on every time Maddie puts one over the fence.
“I know his impact is still here and every girl on this team has had an experience with my dad and I’m so glad they did,” Maddie said. “Every time I run around the bases really and truly I’m just like, ‘dinger dinger,’ it’s just something I always do.”
Here’s the Matt St. Jean’s touching video with Maddie, her mom and the awesome “Dinger! Dinger!” calls:
https://twitter.com/MattStJeanWTVA/status/1390747203438850048
