Injury Recovery Series: 2022 Extra Elite 100 Pitcher Halie Pappion Endures a Painful Leg Injury and Surgery (Plus Two Hurricanes & an Ice Storm!) to be a State Champion

Few things are as rewarding for an athlete as coming back from a serious injury to play at the same level—or hopefully better—than before.

We at Extra Inning Softball respect, admire and marvel at the courage shown by many outstanding softball players who battle back and are presenting our Injury Recovery Series to spotlight some of these courageous athletes… here’s one, for example:

*** Click HERE to read about North Carolina player Courtney Kow who worked hard to return to play just 5 months after a complete ACL tear and reconstructive surgery!

For Halie Pappion, an outstanding pitcher from Louisiana, she has endured trials and tribulations on a biblical plague scale but come back as a champion… literally!

The junior lefty recently helped her Barbe High School team out of Lake Charles, Louisiana win the 5A state title but it was a long and winding journey that saw her have to endure the uncertainty of a leg injury that required surgery last October.

The injury was so bad, her doctor thought that it would be career ending.

As if THAT wasn’t enough to deal with, Halie had to combat some serious weather disasters—two major hurricanes last Fall that forced her and her family to be displaced and have no school or facilities to attend and then the athlete and her family was forced to deal with a major ice storm in February of this year!

So how did the well-liked and personable young athlete respond?

Halie, who was ranked in the Top 50 of the most recent 2022 Extra Elite 100 because of her great composure in the circle, mid-60’s speed and tough-to-handle change-up, put all the distractions to the side and had a dream season she could only, well, dream about.

Halie led her team to a 31-2 record this Spring, culminating in a championship game win over the team led by a 2021 signed with LSU.

The finish was fantastic, for sure, but let’s set the table on how good Halie has been for so long:

• At 12U, she was an All-American,
• At 14U in 2018, she led her Hotshots-Falterman team to the USA Elite Word Championships title,
• The next year, she led her Bombers – Burgess team to the USA Elite World Championship (second year in a row) and also the Triple Crown Sparkler Power Pool title,
• In 2019 she was named Class 5A 1^st Team All-State and the All-Southwest Louisiana MVP after batting .423 with 10 home runs and 44 RBIs while going 21-5 in the circle with 202 K’s in 166.1 innings and compiling a 1.23 ERA,
• Summer and Fall of 202 didn’t play because of a leg injury and subsequent surgery in October,
• This year (2021), was released in January, played her first full game in February and won the Class 5A State Title in May!

It’s an inspiring story of plowing through and preserving so we connected with Halie to get her recap of her, let’s just say, quite the “eventful” year!

Here’s her rundown chronologically of her amazing junior year journey!

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March 2020: my sophomore high school season ended due to COVID.

June 2020: had been having pain in leg that felt like shin splints since February. Kept playing with pain and my Dad decided that needed to get it checked out. The X-ray showed a crack in the tibia in the middle of my leg. The doctor said it was a career ending injury and he put me in a boot. I also found out about my Vitamin D deficiency and started taking vitamins immediately.

June 2020: a week later, I got second opinion from a surgeon in Houston. I was told I could have surgery to fix my leg or wear a boot, then gradually start pitching to see if it would heal on its own.  I took six different vitamins daily and purchased a bone stim machine and used it for 20 minutes daily to speed up healing of bone.

August 2020: I gradually started pitching with minimal pain.

August 2020: Hurricane Laura hit and we were evacuated… when we finally came home, we saw that our softball field was destroyed, our school severely damaged and that many other people had been displaced and relocated too.

Sept 1, 2020: Got a text message from a college coach at midnight.

Sept. 2, 2020: Flew to Indiana to train

Sept. 3, 2020: I made a call to a college coach and decided to open up my recruitment after originally committed to Louisiana as an 8^th grader.

October 5, 2020: I flew to Houston to play in my first tournament and had a lot of pain. I played through it until I could no longer. There was a lot of pain when I landed on my leg and my pitches kept going high. By Sunday, I could barely walk and knew something was wrong. My parents bought a plane ticket to bring me back come home.

October 7, 2020: My mom called the doctor and he got me an appointment for that Friday.

October 8, 2020: The next day was a Thursday and the second major hurricane, Hurricane Delta, hit Lake Charles. My mom and my sister evacuated to Houston this time while my dad stayed behind to work.

October 9, 2020: That was a Friday and we flew into Houston and headed straight to the doctor’s office from the airport. My leg was x-rayed and I got an MRI; it “appeared” that the leg bone had healed abnormally, which was the reason for the pain. Surgery was scheduled for the end of October.

October 27, 2020: I had surgery and when the doctor went in, he discovered the bone was still cracked. A rod and screws were inserted to stabilize the bone while it healed. The doctor said I would be back on the mound in 8-12 weeks.

October 29, 2020: I had my first physical therapy session and my road to recovery began. That would begin my having therapy three times a week.

December 2020: We made the decision for me to join a 16U team since I had decided to open up my recruitment during COVID and I hadn’t played in nearly a year. I wanted to take my time healing and come back without all the pressure. Joining Georgia Impact Jeffries/Townsend seemed like the perfect fit for me.

January 13, 2021: I was released to full pitch. Go TIME!

January 14, 2021: I headed to Alabama for my first practice with my new club team.

February 10, 2021: I pitched for three innings in a high school scrimmage.. it was a great outing!

February 21, 2020: I pitched my first full games in a high school tournament.

May 1, 2021: We won 5A STATE CHAMPIONSHIP!

This was the first time for our school in 24 years. We went to the State Championship game my freshman year and were just one out away from winning in the 7th inning and we lost.  It was a huge heartbreak and my biggest heartbreak ever playing softball.

We didn’t have softball last year because of COVID, so this title was very meaningful to us! We had to do it this year and—though the season had its ups and some downs—we prevailed, especially after everything that we endured!

— Halie Pappion, 2022 pitcher, Alfred M. Barbe (Lake Charles, Louisiana)

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Post-script: On Friday (May 8, 2021), the outstanding pitcher was named by NBC affiliate KPLC 7 in Lake Charles, Louisiana as the KPLC 7 Sports Person of the Week:

Our KPLC 7 Sports Person of the Week is Barbe softball pitcher Halie Pappion (@HPappion).

She helped lead @SoftballBarbe to a Class 5A state championship win over Airline. https://t.co/hAa7FTyUWH #SWLApreps #SPOTW pic.twitter.com/MiEQbbpEJW

— KPLC 7 Sports (@KPLC7Sports) May 8, 2021