Prague senior Diana Manning had quite a high school sports career, winning a state championship as a freshman at Dale with her sisters, Danielle and Delanie, then sitting out a year after going to Prague. She started two years on the Prague basketball team and helped lead the Lady Devils to the fastpitch state tournament last fall.
But nothing was quite like the text she got a couple of weeks ago, telling her that the school year was over and her final softball season was done after three games.
“It’s devastating,” she said. “It’s very hard to have a decision made and everything you worked for ripped out from under you.
“I was awestruck to have everything shut down overnight.”
Diana says she has kept in touch with her teammates, five of whom are planning to play college softball. All are taking it hard, she said.
“Overall, we’re just upset that softball as we know it is over,” she said. “We figured once spring break got here, it would push back to when we went back to school, and there was no going back to the building.”
Now that the season is toast, Diana spends her time applying for scholarships and planning for her college time at OBU.
And she has the memories of her softball career, cut short though it might have been - “the girls, the atmosphere everyone put off, the bus rides, the lockerrooms, the workouts, the four-hour practices.”