by Dakota Antelman
Haley Gaffney, a four-time all-star and three year varsity softball captain at Hudson High School, recently signed her letter of intent to Ithaca College in New York. The senior, who had long attracted the attention of recruiters throughout college athletics, is now being praised for prioritizing academics over athletics.
Gaffney plans to major in physical therapy at Ithaca. The program she will be a part of has a highly selective 20% acceptance rate. She also will play softball as she works towards her degree, continuing a long career of competitive and high profile softball. It is the balance of sports and academics that Gaffney plans to sustain that has drawn Coach Mary Beth Cashman to say she admires Gaffney.
“She put school first,” Cashman said. “Softball came second. I think that speaks volumes of her maturity and her understanding of how the world works.”
Gaffney has spent four seasons as the starting first basemen for the Hawks. She has spent her summers playing for the Polar Crush softball club and has participated in high profile showcases across the country. More than a year ago, she began contacting college recruiters and coaches, choosing the schools she applied to based not off of their NCAA affiliation, but rather off of their physical therapy programs.
“I took a look at the schools in the area and made a list of all the ones that had physical therapy programs that I could join,” Gaffney explained. “Then I gave it to my Polar Crush coach, and he worked on getting me in contact with the coaches of the softball programs at those places.”
Gaffney says that Ithaca was not on that initial list she gave to her coach. In fact, her interaction with Ithaca
only began when a coach from the program saw her play at a showcase event in Binghamton New York.
“Their coach, she wasn’t allowed to talk to me yet [because of NCAA rules],” Gaffney said. “But she got in contact with my coach, gave him her card and said she was really impressed with how I played. She said that she would love for me to get in contact with her.”
Gaffney set up a visit to the Ithaca campus in September of last year and described a feeling of falling in love when she first stepped onto its grounds.
“I visited the campus, and it was absolutely beautiful,” she said. “They say that when you walk on a campus, you know that it’s your school. That day I knew that as soon as I stepped on it. As I met people, everyone was just so nice. I knew it was the place for me. I felt really comfortable there.”
Cashman, who wrote Gaffney’s letter of recommendation, and offered guidance throughout the recruiting process, says Gaffney texted her a picture of the softball field at Ithaca that day with the caption, “This is where I want to play.”
Gaffney describes signing her letter of intent to Ithaca as “the cherry on top.” It comes two years after her hopes of college softball were nearly crushed.
In the fall of her sophomore year, an injury she had initially sustained in seventh grade while playing basketball became too much for Gaffney to bear. She had torn her labrum in her right shoulder, her throwing arm. She says she got to a point where she was dislocating her shoulder five times a week.
“It just wasn’t functional anymore. I couldn’t do anything, much less play a sport,” she said.
Gaffney underwent surgery on her shoulder that fall. Even with the surgery however, Gaffney understood that she would never be able to throw with her right arm again. So, that winter, she worked with her father, James Gaffney, to retrain herself to throw with her left arm.
The two started throwing while Haley still had her right arm in a sling. They threw until she got out of the sling and was able to move into batting cages and onto a field. She continued to work on throws there while also working on fielding with her right hand. By the end of the winter, both Haley and her father agreed that she was fielding close to 1,000 balls each day.
“I would do anything to let her play the game she loved,” James Gaffney explained. “That’s why we went down and worked 6 or 7 hours a week, that’s why we threw so much.”
Haley gave up basketball and did not play field hockey in the year following the injury. However, she returned to the softball team that spring ready to play as a left-handed first baseman. Cashman described the transition between her right and left hands as “seamless.”
“Other coaches, I have to tell them, ‘She’s not left handed, she switched arms,'” Cashman said. “I don’t know about the winter; those first few weeks she probably threw a bunch of balls away. But I never saw that, and all I saw was her throwing with the left hand. I never even worried.”
The success on the field has made Gaffney a favorite of coaches and a feared opponent throughout her league. Likewise, as Gaffney has put in hours of work in batting cages and on the practice field, she has maintained a heavy course load, taking multiple science courses and logging hours as an intern at Hardy’s Physical Therapy as an upperclassmen.
“I’m pretty tough on her when it comes to sports,” explains James Gaffney. “But I would say, I’m much harder on her academically. I think Haley definitely had some opportunities to go for a DI or DII school, but she went to Ithaca because she liked the softball program and the physical therapy program. We’re very proud of her for making that choice.”
Gaffney did get her offers from Division I schools. Most notably, she was accepted into the Honors College at UMASS Lowell, a school with a Division I softball program. But in the end, she says she found her place at Ithaca college.
On December 21, Gaffney was grinning, decked out in an Ithaca college tee-shirt and hat. She had her family, teammates and coach gathered around her as she signed her letter of intent.
Reflecting on Gaffney as a player and a person, Cashman said, “You ask ninth graders what they want to be, they say baseball player and they don’t know what that takes. She just has such a realistic approach. She’s gonna be a doctor for crying out loud!”
