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ABOUT
Senior infielder Rylie Grantz at Lafayette (Lexington, Kentucky) High showed great promise early in her career before frustrating losing most of the last three years but still has fulfilled her dream of playing at the collegiate level.
The third baseman/shortstop was one of the top players in her district and region as an 8th grader, earning 1st team All-City, 1st Team All-District, and 1st Team All-District Tournament teams and, in one notable game, she faced current Alabama star pitcher Montana Fouts and got two singles off of the All-American hurler.
Rylie, however, struggled with a difficult-to-diagnose shoulder injury that slowed down her progress and ultimately led to her needing a world-renowned sports medicine doctor to surgically repair her shoulder after two years of physical therapy and rehabilitation.
Just when it looked like she was poised to make a big return last year after missing her Freshman and Sophomore seasons, the COVID-19 pandemic all but took out her Junior season as well.
Still, Rylie—who plays for Bobby Roark’s Team Kentucky 18U Gold team–persevered and the story has a happy ending in that Rylie was one of five recruits who signed with West Alabama in the DII Gulf South Conference last November.
Upon her officially joining the Tigers’ program, Head Coach Carie Dever-Boaz said: “Rylie is an amazing athlete and plays with tremendous passion. She is a true student of the game and brings a high softball IQ to the field. I expect her to make an immediate impact.”
Here’s more on her story…
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‘Her career … kind of stopped.’ Why a 2020 season would have ‘meant everything.’
Original story written by Mark Story and published May 19, 2020 in The Lexington Herald-Leader
It is hard to imagine there were many athletes in Kentucky high school sports more stoked for their 2020 seasons than Lafayette softball standout Rylie Grantz.
To understand why the now-canceled high school softball season — victim of the coronavirus pandemic and the efforts to contain it — meant so much to Grantz, one must retrace the adversity-filled journey she took to reach what should have been her junior season.
In 2017, as an eighth-grader, Grantz stamped herself as one of the city of Lexington’s up-and-coming softball talents. Playing shortstop for Lafayette, Grantz earned Herald-Leader First Team All-City recognition.
Facing the unhittable East Carter pitching phenom Montana Fouts (now an All-America pitcher for Alabama), the eighth-grade Grantz got two hits. “That was really cool,” Grantz says.
Yet after Grantz showed so much promise, “her career, it abruptly kind of stopped,” says Lafayette Coach Dan Grantz, Rylie’s father.
After two injury-plagued seasons, Lafayette third baseman Rylie Krantz was hoping for a major comeback in 2020 – only to see the high school softball season canceled by the coronavirus pandemic. Photo submitted by Dan Grantz
Over the next two maddening years, a mysterious right shoulder malady sabotaged Rylie Grantz’s softball ambitions.
Her throwing shoulder began aching during the fall of Grantz’s freshman year. At the time, Grantz was a three-sport athlete, playing volleyball, basketball and softball.
“It started out as kind of a dull pain,” Rylie Grantz says. “And it just kept getting worse and worse.”
Doctors search for an answer
What followed was a multi-year ordeal in which multiple doctors struggled to successfully identify what was wrong with Rylie Grantz’s shoulder.
An initial MRI found that Grantz’s first rib on her right side was broken.
For a time, doctors thought the shoulder problem was being caused by scapular dyskenesis (deviation in the normal resting or active position of the scapula during shoulder movement).
Later, ulnar nerve compression (the ulnar nerve is pressured as it passes through the wrist or elbow) was diagnosed.
Through it all, Grantz tried to play through pain. She sat out part of her freshman softball season, then returned for what was an important game at Woodford County.
It did not go well.
“I was batting, it was an outside pitch and I took it foul,” Grantz recalls. “It felt like my shoulder almost collapsed. It was bad. I couldn’t finish the game.”
The longer the shoulder ached with no medical remedy emerging, the more frustration mounted.
“Really the hopelessness starts to set in,” Dan Grantz says. “Rylie was trying to be recruited (by colleges) and was trying to figure out how to get in front of coaches. It was really hard.”
During her sophomore season in 2019, Rylie Grantz again tried to play through discomfort, only to get shut down once more.
In April 2019, Grantz underwent cubital tunnel surgery to relieve the pressure on the ulnar nerve.
Yet as her shoulder continued to ache, a frustrated Grantz was referred to Dr. Ben Kibler, an orthopedic surgeon at the Lexington Clinic.
After another MRI, Kibler recommended surgery to repair a torn labrum in the right shoulder.
“But even on that MRI, it wasn’t exactly clear (what was wrong),” Dan Grantz says. “When Dr. Kibler suggested surgery, even then, we were kind of skeptical.”
Nevertheless, desperate for a shoulder solution, Rylie Grantz underwent the labrum surgery on Aug. 6, 2019, at the Lexington Clinic.
A comeback delayed
After the second surgery, Grantz rehabbed maniacally because it meant so much to the third baseman to play softball for Lafayette in 2020.
Led by four seniors — Lucy Basehart, Carlee Jeter, Anna Norby and Kayla Riley and junior Natalie Henry — Lafayette was projected to be a top-10 team in the state in 2020.
“We wanted to go to state (tournament),” Grantz says. “… If you ask anybody on our team, they will say, ‘This is our year.’ And the seniors, they are some of my best friends. I wanted to be back to play this one last season with my (senior) friends. It meant everything.”
To get back, Grantz paid a steep price in hard work.
She would get up before school to work out with a trainer; after school, she would go to physical therapy for rehab on the shoulder; she would then report for softball practice.
“Then I would come home and do my homework till 11, 12 o’clock,” she says. “I was exhausted, but it was worth it. I wanted to get back so bad.”
Had the coronavirus pandemic not forced the KHSAA to cancel spring sports, Grantz seemed set to come back.
In mid-March, when the season would have begun, “I want to say I was about 70 percent (of pre-injury form) hitting-wise,” she says. “Throwing-wise, I want to say I was maybe 60 percent. Enough to play.”
Not to get that chance “was heartbreaking. It felt like a slap in the face,” Grantz says.
With Fayette public schools shut down and no softball games to play, Grantz has used the time to continue to work on her game.
With one season of high school softball eligibility remaining plus the hope of 2020 travel ball, Grantz still aspires to earn a chance to play college softball.
“She’s continued to get stronger,” Dan Grantz says. “I think she’s about 90 percent back now.”
Recently, father and daughter went to work out on an open softball field.
“She threw the ball all the way from left field to home — and it was on a rope,” Dan Grantz says. “This time last year, she couldn’t even pick a ball up. She couldn’t put her hair in a ponytail because she couldn’t lift her arm. That throw, it almost brought me to tears.”